Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — ENVIRONMENT

Local Government Finance

Mr. Cadbury: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to complete consultations arising from his Green Paper on local government finance.

Mr. Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received in the last month on reform of the domestic rating system.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine): Comments have been invited by 31 March. By Monday 18 January, 10 representations had been received advocating a variety of solutions.

Mr. Cadbury: Before my right hon. Friend completes his consultations, will he bear in mind that the burden on the ratepayer has been greatly exacerbated by the present two-tier system, which involves two levels of local government competing over the spending of ratepayers' money? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the daunting task facing him and his colleagues in the reform of the rating system would be made much easier if the upper level of local government were abolished and we returned to the unitary system?

Mr. Heseltine: There are pressures to look at the structure of parts of local government. Those pressures would be reduced if some authorities were less free with their spending policies. The Government's immediate priority is to deal with the financial aspects in the Green Paper.

Mr. Chapman: Since domestic rates bring in only 16 per cent. of total local authority revenue, and as they are an inherently unfair tax, does my right hon. Friend agree that their replacement by a tax, or taxes, collected nationally would not be detrimental to local government freedom, because local government has never had any financial freedom?

Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend will recognise that that is a controversial assertion. However, there is merit in the underlying argument. I must ask him to wait until the end of the consultation period before expecting me to reach any conclusions.

Mr. Sever: Does the Secretary of State recognise that many of the representations on local government finance

that he has received and will receive boil down to the fact that he is starving local government of sufficient funds to carry out the duties for which its members believe they have been duly elected? Will he give prime consideration to ensuring that local government receives more money?

Mr. Heseltine: It is difficult to square that with the thought that the first investigation into an alternative method of financing local government was held when the very reverse policies were in practice.

Mr. Squire: Notwithstanding the observations of try hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman), does my right hon. Friend recognise that for many years local government has been able to determine its level of spending and has been answerable to the ratepayers for any excesses? In the consultations, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the importance of speedy legislation—preferably in 1982–83?

Mr. Heseltine: I am sure that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not intrude into the debate between him and my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman). When we have reached conclusions, it will be important to advance with dispatch.

Mr. Ward: Will my right hon. Friend continue to consider the problems of commercial and industrial ratepayers, who are mentioned briefly in the Green Paper, who bear a high proportion of local government finance? They are being threatened out of existence by some local authorities.

Mr. Heseltine: I hope that my hon. Friend will not misunderstand me when I say that it is difficult for me to avoid considering the problems of all ratepayers. I am aware that great concern is being expressed by commercial and industrial ratepayers, who find themselves paying ever increasing rate bills without any form of direct representation on authorities. The Government's main concern is to deal with alternatives to, or the reform of, domestic rates. In that context, I shall have to consider the implications for commercial and industrial rates.

Ratepayers (Protection)

Mr. Heddle: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what measures he proposes to protect ratepayers in high spending local authorities during 1982–83.
The Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services (Mr. Tom King): The ban on supplementary rates and precepts provided for in the Local Government Finance (No 2) Bill will protect ratepayers from unexpected additional rate demands after the start of the financial year. Ratepayers will also benefit from the continued efforts of the Government to encourage local authorities to achieve greater economies in their expenditure.

Mr. Heddle: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the Government's measures will receive widespread support throughout the rate-paying electorate, especially from industrial and commercial ratepayers, who have no vote or voice on the way in which high-spending authorities are spending their money? Does he agree that the only way to protect the ratepayer against extravagant Labour-controlled high-spending authorities is to increase accountability of councils to their electorates.

Mr. King: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting the first part of his supplementary question. There is no doubt that this year some supplementary rates have caused enormous distress and real difficulties for private ratepayers and for business and industry. We wish to encourage accountability and more information about council activities, costs and expenditures. I know that my hon. Friend supports that approach.

Mr. Foster: How does the right hon. Gentleman intend to protect tenant ratepayers in St. Helens, Auckland, who have lost their homes, most of their furniture and most of their clothing because they could not afford to have their heating on all day and suffered burst pipes as a result of the freeze? Is he aware that the local authority faces a bill of almost £500,000? Will he undertake to send one of his colleagues to St. Helens to see the position and to say how the Government will protect the ratepayers to whom I have referred?

Mr. King: The hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot answer off the cuff a detailed question about his constituency. The best way in which he can represent his constituents' interests in the serious situation that they face is to approach my Department. It may be a matter for my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction. I know that my hon. Friend will wish to consider the facts.

Mr. Major: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the actions of high-spending authorities are of concern also to ratepayers within the areas of low-spending local authorities? Will he assure such ratepayers that they need not fear a contraction of their services next year as a result of the imposition of financial penalties because of the actions of high-spending authorities?

Mr. King: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising an important issue. There is a cash limit on the rate support grant. Under the practice of the Labour Government, high-spending authorities could attract more grant for themselves at the expense of prudent low-spending authorities. That is a practice that we have been determined to change. The previous Government imposed holdback on local authorities across the board. The advantage of our proposals, as set out in clause 4 of the Local Government Finance (No. 2) Bill, is that no longer will holdback be across the board. It will no longer apply equally to the prudent as well as to the extravagant.

Mr. Allen McKay: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that some of the high-spending authorities are those in greatest need? The Government have closed schools and old people's homes and removed welfare benefits. Does he further accept that the judgment on a local authority should come from the electors, not from the Government? Does he appreciate that the Government are removing the freedom of electors to elect the representatives that they want to form an authority?

Mr. King: No hon. Member could ask that supplementary question without revealing a failure to study even the most basic local authority statistics. If the hon. Gentleman studies them he will find, regardless of political persuasion, that Labour authorities in areas of high need are able to provide adequate services without the levels of expenditure of other less efficient authorities which fail to provide adequate services. The hon. Gentleman should

study some of the comparative statistics on the performance of authorities. If he does, he will appreciate the degree of inefficiency in some authorities.

Rented Accommodation

Mr. Crowther: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received from housing associations about the allocation of resources for the provision of rented accommodation during the next financial year.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir George Young): We have received a number of representations from housing associations about the importance of making continued provision for rented accommodation. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction said in reply to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, North (Mr. Durant) yesterday, the Housing Corporation's 1982–83 development programme for England will include provision for new fair rent schemes about 20 per cent. higher in real terms than in the current year.

Mr. Crowther: Does the Under-Secretary agree that housing associations have carried out an extremely useful job in supplementing local authority housing provision? Therefore, will he assure the House that the high level of resources will continue, at least throughout the lifetime of this Government, until a new Government are elected, who will do the job even better?

Sir George Young: As chairman of the Acton housing association for seven years, I endorse what the hon. Gentleman said about valuable role of housing associations in tackling housing need. We have increased the resources available to the Housing Corporation for next year in recognition of the valuable role that it plays and will, I hope, continue to play.

House Building

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what are the latest figures available for the number of local authority housing starts and completions; if he will take steps to increase these numbers; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. John Stanley): In the first 11 months of 1981 there were 20,000 local authority and new town housing starts in England and 52,000 completions. As announced by my right hon. Friend on 21 December, the gross provision for local authority housing capital expenditure in 1982–83 shows an increase in real terms on the current year.

Mr. Roberts: Will the Minister now come clean and admit that the Government's policies have destroyed local authority housing programmes and all hope for hundreds of thousands of desperate people on council housing waiting lists?

Mr. Stanley: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. Far from the Government destroying all hope, the hopes of many of achieving owner-occupation have been fulfilled. The Government have also made a considerable contribution to the rented sector. I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman has been corresponding with the Department about the area represented by the local authority within his constituency. If he wishes to accuse


the Government of not making sufficient capital investment available to his own local authority, I am sure that he will want to ask why the Cannock Chase district council has spent only one-quarter of its allocation, plus receipts, halfway through this financial year.

Mr. Durant: Will my hon. Friend tell the House what capital receipts have been received from the sale of council houses, and will he urge councils to spend those capital receipts on housing before the end of the financial year?

Mr. Stanley: We estimated at the beginning of the financial year that there would be housing capital receipts in excess of £400 million. That estimate looks like being fulfilled, if not exceeded. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is imperative that local authorities make every possible attempt to utilise to the full the substantial housing and non-housing capital receipts which represent an addition to the allocation itself.

Mr. Douglas-Mann: Does the Minister agree that the figures that he has announced are below those forecast by the Select Committee on the Environment and that on present trends nearly 500,000 families will be suffering from homelessness, low standards of accommodation, overcrowding or inability to form households by the end of this Parliament? Does he accept that the actuality will be even worse than the forecasts of the Select Committee on which the Conservative Party had a majority?

Mr. Stanley: The figures that I have quoted refer to the public sector. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will wish to welcome the increase of about 22 per cent. in private sector housing starts in the first 11 months of 1981, despite the recession.

Mr. Winnick: An increase on what?

Mr. Stanley: Before the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann) becomes too critical of the Government's housing policy, no doubt he will reflect on the fact that the Social Democratic Party, which he has recently joined, has no housing policy.

Mr. Heddle: Does my hon. Friend agree that perhaps the best way to restore hope to the hundreds of thousands who are on council housing waiting lists is for the Labour Party to withdraw its blind and dogmatic objections to the Government's shorthold proposals and give people the right to rent homes?

Mr. Stanley: My hon. Friend is right. If the right hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) had not entered the particular commitment to repeal shorthold on behalf of the official Opposition, many thousands of additional properties to rent would be available now.

Mr. Kaufman: Is it not a fact that the number of new council houses started in 1981 was the lowest for 70 years? The allocation for 1982, with a reduction of 4 per cent. on the Government's phoney inflation rate of 8·9 per cent., will mean that 1982 will be worse than the disastrous 1981. Will the Government now increase HIP allocations by £1 billion, put 120,000 building workers to work and halve homelessness?

Mr. Stanley: If the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about housing the homeless, he should immediately withdraw his objection to shorthold.

Playing Fields

Mr. McNally: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received from national sporting bodies on the present and future provision of playing fields by local authorities.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Neil Macfarlane): The Football Association has written to me about the possible sale of school playing fields by local education authorities. I am aware also that the Sports Council and the Central Council for Physical Recreation have expressed concern on this issue. One of the national newspapers has given me a list of allegedly threatened playing fields, which I am having checked through the regional councils for sport and recreation.

Mr. McNally: Will the Minister state whether it is the Government's intention that local authorities should sell playing fields for building speculation? If not, will he meet a delegation of interested Members and representatives of sports associations who are worried about the implications of the regulations? Having listened to their representations, will he discuss with the Secretary of State for Education and Science an amendment to remove that threat to school playing fields and other recreation facilities?

Mr. Macfarlane: It is not the Government's intention to sell off those premises and facilities. I shall try to acquaint the House with the background. The Department of Education and Science regulations merely set new minimum standards for school playing fields. In some areas that could lead to increases in schools' usable sports facilities. I am as concerned as are the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members. That is why I have asked the regional councils for sport and recreation to check on what is happening in those counties. I shall reserve judgment on whether further meetings are necessary until I have that information. A number of authorities have sold land in recent months, just as they have in recent years. That is nothing new. The regulations set new minimum standards.

Mr. Alan Clark: What representations have been received from national sporting bodies, or would my hon. Friend like to tell us a little more about the extraordinary episode last month, when he tried to exert pressure on the secretary of the Football Association to drop the bulldog logo as our World Cup emblem, on the ground that the Spaniards might find it provocative? Does he agree that, even on the most generous interpretation, his responsibilities for sport are somewhat amorphous and that excessive zeal in defending foreign sensibilities is not among them?

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is up to the Minister whether he answers that supplementary question. It is a little remote from the original question.

Mr. Macfarlane: By your leave, Mr. Speaker. I have had no representations from the Football Association on the reports in the press. I admire my hon. Friend's versatility in introducing that subject.

Mr. Denis Howell: If the Minister does not believe that the new regulations and another set on selling playing fields in higher education establishments will lead to the sales of those facilities, why did he tell the conference of the Central Council for Physical Recreation that he expected the new document to lead to the sale of the


playing fields at such schools? Is he not alarmed at the evidence? We welcome the fact that he is consulting the regional councils, but will he ensure that no playing field is sold if it is capable of dual use, especially in areas of deprivation? Will he also ensure that the National Playing Fields Association's standard of six acres of playing field per 1,000 population is applied in all cases and that no playing field is sold if that standard is not met?

Mr. Macfarlane: I endorse the right hon. Gentleman's remarks about the importance of dual use. At the conference in Bournemouth I stressed the importance of dual use. I said that the Department of Education and Science had conducted a 10 per cent. sample survey to try to find out the extent of use throughout the 105 local education authorities. I want to make it clear that the regulations merely set new minimum standards.

Mr. John Carlisle: Does my hon. Friend agree that it ill behoves the former Minister with responsibility for sport, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell), to talk about dual use of local authority pitches, when the Labour Administration did nothing to help? Does he also agree that part of the reason why local authorities' school pitches cannot be used at weekends is the attitude of narrow-minded school caretakers and their unions?

Mr. Macfarlane: My hon. Friend must look at what is happening in many local authorities in the country. I am enormously encouraged by what I have seen. Many local education authorities have put themselves out greatly in the interests of the community. I pay tribute to them. I should like to see more of that coming on stream.

Mr. Roy Hughes: Is the Minister aware that there is a considerable shortage of playing fields and that his present policy has united in opposition the Sports Council, the Central Council for Physical Recreation and all the teachers' organisations? Why does he not reconsider the matter?

Mr. Macfarlane: It is not a question of reconsideration. If the hon. Gentleman has any examples in his constituency or in the surrounding counties, he should let me know. I shall draw them to the attention of the appropriate regional council for sport and recreation.

Industrial and Commercial Rates

Mr. Marlow: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce legislation to provide for a ceiling on the level of industrial and commercial rates.

Mr. King: I have no plans to do so. Legislation to set a ceiling on increases in business rates would not necessarily achieve our aim of getting high-spending local authorities to reduce the level of their spending, and could in certain circumstances lead to intolerable burdens on the domestic ratepayer.

Mr. Marlow: Will my right hon. Friend change his plans—if he has nothing to do at the moment—because the Government had proposed that there should be a cut-off point for rate increases that could be imposed on business and commercial ratepayers? That would have made local authorities that were seeking extortionate rate increases impose them on those who, by their votes, could get rid of those authorities, rather than on the commercial and industrial ratepayer, whose only recourse is to go out of business.

Mr. King: My hon. Friend will understand that our earlier proposal involved transferring the burden to the domestic ratepayer, who had the opportunity to register his opinion through a local poll. We felt that without that protection, it would not be fair to transfer that burden to the domestic ratepayer. Business and industry will benefit considerably from protection against supplementary rates, which did great damage last year. Indeed, there was a prospect of further supplementary rates being demanded this year.

Mr. Stephen Ross: Does the Minister accept that there is a case for some industrial derating, particularly for new small businesses in areas that are not assisted in England and Wales? For instance, there is still industrial derating in Scotland. Why cannot that apply in parts of England and Wales?

Mr. King: There are always arguments for exemptions and reliefs. They have been considered by successive Governments at different times. We conducted experiments in the form of enterprise zones in which we provided total relief from rates. We are monitoring those experiments closely.

Right-to-buy Applications

Mr. Squire: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many right-to-buy applications have now been processed by housing authorities.

Mr. Heseltine: I estimate that, by 30 September 1981 local authorities and new towns in Great Britain had received 440,000 applications. Some 48,000 sales had by that date been completed or, in the case of Scotland, reached the stage when missives had been concluded.

Mr. Squire: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the success to date of that policy. Does he, none the less, accept that in a number of areas, including Conservative-controlled authorities, thousands of tenants have been waiting for over a year for the completion of the purchase of their homes? Will he consider sympathetically an amendment to the 1980 Act that would impose a timetable on all the stages, including completion, and not just on the start of the purchase?

Mr. Heseltine: I am aware that tenants throughout the country, many of whom are in contact with my Department, are concerned about the speed with which the legal processes are advancing. I hope that local government, as it becomes familiar with the techniques of conveying such housing, will make the processes advance faster. That will make it unnecessary to amend the legislation.

Mr. Dobson: In the light of the exhortation of the hon. Member for Reading, North (Mr. Durant) that councils should sell council houses to raise money to build more council houses, will the Secretary of State confirm that, on average, the sale of 12 council houses will be required to finance the building of one?

Mr. Heseltine: That is a completely meaningless statement. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] The hon. Gentleman must be aware that what large numbers of local authority tenants want is the proper management and maintenance of their houses, better use of existing stock and a more rapid turnover in existing vacancies.

Mr. Cartwright: What action will the Secretary of State take about councils, such as Greenwich, which deliberately penalise tenants who express an interest in buying their houses by denying them improvements, decorations and repairs for which they have paid in their rent? However angry Labour councillors may be about being forced to sell council houses, does he agree that they should not vent their anger on tenants who have done no more than exercise their legal rights?

Mr. Heseltine: I am very much in sympathy with that view. It is unjustifiable for a large public body to use the resources at its disposal against the relatively limited resources of individual citizens who have clear legal rights.

Mr. Viggers: Has my right hon. Friend yet been involved in discussions about giving the right to buy to Ministry of Defence tenants? Does he believe that the idea has merit?

Mr. Heseltine: The Ministry of Defence needs to maintain a stock of houses for its strategic purposes, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has discretion to dispose of surplus homes.

Outer London Boroughs (Rates)

Mr. Dykes: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has as to the likely effect of grant-related expenditure adjustments on the rate levels of the outer London boroughs.

Mr. King: Rate levels are determined primarily by authorities' expenditure decisions. For 1982–83 outer London boroughs can expect increases in grant-related expenditure in line with those applying nationally and an increased share of the block grant if they meet their expenditure targets.

Mr. Dykes: As there are anxieties that basic services may have to be reduced, depending on the outer London borough concerned, how much money does my right hon. Friend believe might be involved in adjusting the formula for the percentage reduction of spending to the real rate of inflation, as opposed to the theoretical lower rate of inflation?

Mr. King: I could not answer that detailed question without notice, but I shall give my hon. Friend the information.

Mr. Pavitt: Does the Minister recall the Secretary of State's assurance to me in the House about the London borough of Brent, which has inner city problems and the highest number of ethnic minority residents of all the London boroughs? Will he ensure that any adjustment in the rate support grant, and so on, in the coming year takes those factors into account?

Mr. King: The proposals will shortly be contained in an order to be laid before the House. If the hon. Gentleman studies the proposals he will see that in the GREA the London borough of Brent, for some of the reasons that he gave, has benefited significantly.

Housing Starts and Completions

Mr. Hooley: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the estimated number of housing starts in the Yorkshire and Humberside region in 1981; and how this compares with the figure for 1979.

Sir George Young: Figures for the last quarter are not yet available, but about 10,000 dwellings were started in the region in the first three quarters of 1981, compared with 13,000 in the same period of 1979.

Mr. Hooley: Is not the massacre of the housing programme one of the Government's most stupid policies? Will it not have serious social consequences, particularly in areas like Yorkshire, which still has many pre-First World War houses? Will it not also have disastrous economic consequences, as it seriously damages the private and public sectors of the house building industry?

Sir George Young: When the hon. Gentleman talks about the massacre of the house building programme, he might reflect on the figures for the region from 1976 to 1979, when they fell from 22,040 to 13,255. We have increased the HIP allocation for Sheffield by 4·5 per cent. in real terms for next year. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to see more money spent in Sheffield to tackle housing problems, perhaps he will persuade the local authority to sell its homes to the 4,000 tenants who have already established their right to buy. That would bring in about £5 million and increase by about 25 per cent. the money that Sheffield has to spend on housing.

Mr. John H. Osborn: Bearing in mind the level of public housing in the past, will my hon. Friend give us the recent figures for private housing starts?

Sir George Young: The private sector figures that I have for the region for the three quarters of last year are 2,121, 2,928 and 2,486. I am happy to say that for the past two quarters the figures show a useful increase over the same period in 1980.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: Will the Minister bear in mind that thousands of houses, especially in South Yorkshire and the Yorkshire area generally, are crying out for modernisation? Where the local authority has no money to improve them, will the Government help financially?

Sir George Young: The hon. Gentleman's question shows that it does not make sense for Opposition Members to concentrate their attack on starts. Housing conditions can also be improved by modernisaton and other work. We have introduced a new system whereby local authorities have absolute discretion to spend the money that we give them as they wish. If they wish to spend it on improvement they can do so. The region that the hon. Gentleman represents could get an extra £60 million if it sold to council tenants the homes that they have applied to buy.

New Towns (House Condition Report)

Mr. Dormand: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to receive the report of the National Building Agency relating to the condition of houses in certain new towns.

Mr Stanley: On present plans my right hon. Friend expects to receive the report by the end of May.

Mr. Dormand: Is the Minister aware of the massive problems facing Easington district council relating to Peterlee new town? Is he aware that one estimate of the cost of repairing houses in the town is £40 million? How can he expect local people to bear that cost? When the report is received, will Peterlee have first priority,


especially as one of the Minister's colleagues admitted a few months ago that its plight was worse than that of all the other new towns? As Easington district council was told to get on with the repairs and that some money would be refunded, why has it not yet received a penny?

Mr. Stanley: I am aware of the problems facing Easington district council. The hon. Gentleman strongly represents the council and his constituents. In making the HIP allocation to the authority we have borne in mind the problems created by the defects in the Peterlee new town houses that have been transferred to Easington. Despite our decision to wind up the National Building Agency, we have this morning signed an agreement under which the new town defects contract will be transferred to a private sector consultancy formed by former NBA staff.

Mr. Philip Holland: By what date does my hon. Friend expect the NBA to complete all its tasks and be wound up?

Mr. Stanley: As my right hon. Friend said, we are working to a wind-up date of March 1982.

Mr. Foster: As the £16 million repair bill that the Sedgefield district council will have to meet as a result of repairs in the new town of Newton Aycliffe will have risen by at least 12 per cent. as a result of the year's delay occasioned by the Minister referring the problem to the NBA, what does he intend to do?

Mr. Stanley: One of the main reasons for the delay was that we were unable to agree with representatives of the Association of District Councils on the basis for a settlement. That led to a reference to the NBA. The association, through its various authorities affected by the problem, has bid for a substantial sum of public money and it is incumbent on us to establish the exact technical nature of the problem and to cost it as accurately as we can before payments are made.

Royal Parks (Fishing)

Mr. Jessel: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what recent representations he has received on fishing in lakes and ponds in Royal parks.

Mr. Macfarlane: I have received from my hon. Friend a petition signed by about 800 people protesting against the prohibition of fishing in 1981 in three ponds in Home park, Hampton Court.

Mr. Jessel: As fishing is a healthy outdoor activity which should be encouraged, will my hon. Friend consider carefully what has happened in Hampton Court park at the Wallpond and two other ponds, where for 30 years people have been fishing without hindrance in large and ideal ponds, but now a keen new inspector has been appointed and he is turning everyone away merely because the three ponds are not listed on the permit alongside five other ponds in Hampton Court and the neighbouring Bushey Park? Provided that there is reasonable provision for the conservation of wildlife, will my hon. Friend consider sympathetically extending the permits to the other ponds, especially the Wallpond?

Mr. Macfarlane: I am well aware of my hon. Friend's anxiety, as he came to discuss the matter with me a few weeks ago. It is the problem of conservation and sensible management of wildlife, to which he referred, and the fact

that the ponds have been fished for some 30 years which leads to the need perhaps to rotate fishing in the eight ponds so that it may continue in five of them. I am certainly prepared to have studies carried out.

Mr. Jay: Have the Government any proposals to privatise the Royal parks?

Mr. Macfarlane: If we may rely upon the right hon. Gentleman's support, we may well consider it.

Mr. Chapman: Does my hon. Friend agree that fishing rights should be like planning permission, and that if people get away with it for four years they should have established-use certificates?

Mr. Macfarlane: This is becoming a most constructive exchange. I take note of my hon. Friend's point.

Dr. David Clark: May I add to the constructive nature of the exchange and ask the Minister whether he is prepared to enter into discussions with the Royal parks authorities and with bodies such as the National Anglers Council for management schemes in the Royal parks, which might include the use of lead-free weights and so on? In view of the desperate shortage of fishing opportunities in urban areas, will the Government press ahead with a scheme to create urban fishing areas?

Mr. Macfarlane: I am meeting the National Anglers Council on Friday and these are matters that will be discussed.

London Dockland

Mr. Spearing: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what will be the method of administration of funds made available under the Inner Urban Areas Act in the London Dockland and adjacent areas.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Giles Shaw): The Docklands local authorities will continue to have the power to give loans and grants under the Act, and will continue to receive an allocation of resources for such projects outside the urban development area. Within the urban development area, the London Docklands Development Corporation has the same powers.

Mr. Spearing: Does the Minister agree that within the area covered by the LDDC, the boundaries of which are somewhat arbitrary, it would be for the benefit of all if the LDDC listened to the local authority and thus fulfilled the universal wish that it should act in co-operation with local authorities and in accordance with local wishes?

Mr. Shaw: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but he will agree that in many of its activities the LDDC has already shown great co-operation with the local authorities and in many cases has entered into joint operations. I have every confidence that that atmosphere will continue.

Mr. Squire: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the leader of the local authority sits on the LDDC? Will he also undertake to give greater publicity to the considerable achievement of the LDDC already, and our great expectations for even greater achievements in the future?

Mr. Shaw: I entirely endorse my hon. Friend's view. In its relatively short life the LDDC has achieved a great deal. I believe that the first show houses are to be opened at Beckton by my right hon. Friend on 26 February.

World Cup

Mr. Canavan: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he will meet the football authorities to discuss arrangements for the World Cup.

Mr. Macfarlane: I met the chairman and secretaries of the Football Associations of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales on 1 December last to discuss the general problems of hooliganism abroad by British football supporters and the possibility, in particular, of hooliganism in Spain during the World Cup series.

Mr. Canavan: Will the Minister congratulate Scotland and Northern Ireland on qualifying for the World Cup finals—and, of course, England, which managed to scrape home by the skin of its teeth? What steps are being taken to ensure that football fans receive a fair allocation of tickets without being subject to exploitation by unscrupulous ticket touts and travel agents? What steps are being taken to warn all football fans in advance to be on their best behaviour in Spain, especially in view of some of the recent examples of hooliganism on the part of English football fans abroad, who may be even more incensed when they see Scotland win the World Cup?

Mr. Macfarlane: I shall refrain from speculation about the outcome. One might have hoped that the hon. Gentleman would include some commiseration for the Welsh, who did not quite make it but who, by all rights, should have been there. I am deeply concerned about the problems to which he referred. My officials are in Spain now, visiting all the centres with Spanish representatives. One of my officials also chairs a working party comprising representatives of the Football Association, the Foreign Office and Sports World Travel. All of these matters are under discussion, and I shall personally visit Madrid on 4 and 5 February to discuss these matters further.

Mr. McQuarrie: When my hon. Friend meets the chairmen of the various associations, will he endeavour to persuade them to give a larger allocation to the National Federation of Football Supporters Clubs, as it is the most responsible supporters' body covering the whole of Great Britain? Does he agree that it was proved at the last international that its allocation of tickets to supporters was most satisfactory, in that there was no hooliganism?

Mr. Macfarlane: I shall certainly look into that point. It is one of the matters that we shall be discussing in the next few weeks.

Local Authorities (Rate Demands)

Sir William van Straubenzee: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has as to the extent to which local authority pay settlements so far agreed will affect the rate demands of these authorities.

Mr. Heseltine: I cannot know how individual local authorities will budget for wage settlements already agreed. Nor can I know what judgment they will make of forthcoming settlements. If their views of forthcoming pay settlements are excessive the Government will look to local authorities to make the economies necessary to keep within their cash spending targets.

Sir William van Straubenzee: Is it not, nevertheless, the case that restraint in wage demands has a direct effect

on the eventual outcome for the hard-pressed ratepayer? Will my right hon. Friend keep that constantly before the general public?

Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Restraint in wage settlements will, of course, help the ratepayer. Moreover, it will actually help those employed by local government, as the more modest the settlements, the greater the number of people who will be employed.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I find that most of my constituents favour cuts in expenditure, provided that the Government set an example. They object to the Government seeking cuts in public expenditure when people such as the chairman of British Rail receive increases of 25 per cent.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Only yesterday the hon. Gentleman drew my attention to the fact that a question was irrelevant. He has not even asked a question yet. He has been making a statement.

Mr. Lewis: I was following up the reply to the previous supplementary question relating to wages, Mr. Speaker. Relevant to that, will the Secretary of State ensure that Mr. De Lorean and others receiving public funds are also told to cut their expenditure?

Mr. Skinner: Sort that out.

Mr. Heseltine: I shall do my best to sort that out by referring the matter to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I shall relate my question entirely to local government, Mr. Speaker, for very good reasons. Does my right hon. Friend agree that although local authority wage settlements have a direct relation to the level of rates, the paramount factor is the efficiency of local authorities and their co-operation with the unions in their sector? Will he give an assurance that councils such as the Macclesfield borough council, which has not increased its precept on the ratepayers of the area for four years and will not do so this year, will not be penalised by high-spending authorities, as it has been in the past?

Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He will know, as he supported the measures that we introduced, that low-spending authorities are now not penalised as a consequence of the penalties that we have to apply to high-spending authorities.

Housing Starts

Mr. Winnick: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what was the total number of local authority and private housing starts in 1981; and how many of the local authority starts were for sheltered and other forms of special type accommodation.

Sir George Young: In the first 11 months of 1981 there were 20,000 starts for local authorities and new towns and 97,000 for the private sector in England. Of the 17,000 local authority and new town dwellings started in the first three quarters of 1981, 1,900 were dwellings for the chronically sick and disabled. Figures of starts on dwellings for the elderly are not readily available but will be published in "Housing and Construction Statistics" this year.

Mr. Winnick: When will the Government recognise that these miserable, pathetic figures will result in a


formidable housing crisis in the country and endless heartbreak and tragedy for hundreds of thousands of people waiting to be rehoused? I ask the Ministers responsible for housing when this Tory vendetta against council dwellings will end?

Sir George Young: The position would have been infinitely worse if we had adopted the policy advocated by the Opposition of freezing council rents. If that had happened, there would not have been a capital investment programme.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Is the Minister aware that the pitiful figure of 20,000 that he quoted compares with 87,000 only three years ago? Is the hon. Gentleman aware, further, that this morning hon. Members received figures from the building trades employers showing that only 19 per cent. of their firms were fully or nearly fully employed? Would it not be more sensible to take 440,000 building trade workers off the dole and have those firms working at 100 per cent. capacity?

Sir George Young: It is partly for that reason that we have increased the local authority housing investment programme next year, for the first time since 1974–75. If the hon. Member talks about cuts, I remind him that the figure for public sector starts fell from 173,000 in 1975 to 81,000 in 1979.

Mr. Alton: On the basis of the figures just given by the Minister, how long will the 1 million people still living in houses without inside toilets, running hot water or bathrooms have to remain in those properties? Will he also say whether he agrees that, if the number of sheltered homes were increased, more family dwellings could be made available to people on waiting lists and that it would also get off the dole queue many building workers whose potential contribution is being wasted?

Sir George Young: If the local authority in Liverpool would make faster progress in selling council houses, more money would be available with which to tackle the problems mentioned by the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Alton: indicated dissent.

Sir George Young: There is no point in the hon. Gentleman shaking his head when I say that. Real resources are available with which to tackle these problems.

Mr. Durant: Will my hon. Friend remind the hon. Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. Alton) that if local authorities used their capital receipts they could do a great deal more to improve their properties?

Sir George Young: That is the point that I was trying to make. Now that the point has been reinforced by my hon. Friend, I hope that it will go home.

Mr. Hardy: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many local authority homes he now expects to be built and how many improved during 1982.

Mr. Stanley: This will depend on the decisions of local authorities on the spending of their single block capital allocations and their capital receipts.

Mr. Hardy: Will the Minister tell the House of any peace-time year since the brick was invented when fewer houses were built than will be built in 1982 or were built in 1981?

Mr. Stanley: There has been a reduction in starts on the local authority side, but there has been a significant increase in private sector starts in the course of 1981. As for 1982, I go back to what was said previously. There is still substantial scope for local authorities in the present financial year to spend more on housing. I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the example of Rotherham council. The position there is that capital expenditure on housing half way through this financial year was only just under one-third of the allocation and its receipts.

Mr. Kenneth Carlisle: As I understand it, a council can spend only half its receipts from the sale of council houses on building new ones. Will my hon. Friend consider allowing councils to spend all their receipts in this way so that council house building may increase?

Mr. Stanley: I assure my hon. Friend that the other half is not lost. It is taken into account in making allocations nationally. The local authorities retain all the cash. But if sales of council houses scored 100 per cent., the net allocations would be smaller. I remind my hon. Friend that there are other receipts that score 100 per cent. All sales of land score 100 per cent., and there has been a substantial increase in allocations this year as a result of land sales made by a number of authorities.

Mr. Kaufman: rose—

Mr. Hardy: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the Minister's lamentable failure to show—

Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy) gives notice of his intention to raise the matter on the Adjournment, he will prevent his right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) from being called.

Mr. Kaufman: Why do the Minister and his colleagues consistently mislead the House with the claim that they have increased the housing investment programme allocation for the coming year? Is it not a fact that on the figures that the Minister gave me, the housing investment programme allocation is reduced by 4 per cent., and that that 4 per cent. reduction is based upon a phoney 9 per cent. inflation figure?

Mr. Stanley: The right hon. Gentleman is living in the world which ended on 31 March 1981. From 1 April 1981, all local authorities have been able to add their capital receipts to their base allocations. The facts are that the gross provision for housing—the allocation plus receipts—represents an increase in real terms next year.

Mr. Kaufman: Is that not a completely phoney comparison? We are talking about the allocations in the information that the Minister provided to me. These are allocations, not notional capital receipts, and on these allocations the Government have reduced housing investment programme allocations by more than £70 million. Will the Minister stop misleading the House?

Mr. Stanley: It is the right hon. Gentleman who is misleading the House. He knows that every local authority has been told in explicit terms in a different document that it is able to add its capital receipts to its allocation. This represents several hundreds of millions of pounds extra nationally which local authorities can add to their housing programmes as from 1 April this year.

Mr. Heddle: Does my hon. Friend agree that there are ways of meeting housing needs other than by building new


homes, including the promotion by local authorities of shared ownership, low-cost ownership and building for sale?

Mr. Stanley: My hon. Friend is right. I am encouraged by the fact that there has been a significant response in the past six to nine months to the very important range of low-cost home ownership initiatives introduced by the Government.

Mr. Hardy: I am sorry that I was a little premature in rising on my point of order just now, Mr. Speaker. I was extremely shocked by the Minister's display of his complete ignorance of the problems of local government. I beg to give notice that I shall seek an early opportunity to raise this grossly unsatisfactory matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Thomas: Cox asked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many (a) council and (b) private houses are now under construction in the Greater London Council area.

Sir George Young: About 13,000 local authority and 14,300 private dwellings were under construction in London at the end of September 1981.

Mr. Cox: Is the Minister aware that those figures are an appalling indictment of two and a half years of Tory Government? In view of the enormous housing problems in London, why cannot the Government start to put into employment the thousands of building workers whom they forced to go on to the dole and get the local authorities to start to tackle these problems? The hon. Gentleman knows that they have to be tackled. Surely now is the time to start doing it.

Sir George Young: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will get some comfort from the fact that private sector housing starts in London in the third quarter of 1981 were nearly double the number in the comparable period of 1980. The 1982–83 HIP allocation for London is £558 million, compared with £549 million this year. London will receive a HIP allocation equivalent to more than £200 per household compared with less than £100 per household for the rest of the country. We are trying to tackle London's housing problems.

Mr. Major: To put the matter in context, how many council houses in Greater London are empty and have been empty for many months?

Sir George Young: Our latest figures show that there are 32,814 local authority dwellings empty in London.

Owner Occupation

Mr. Robert Atkins: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what measures he proposes to increase owner occupation in partnership areas and other inner city stress areas.

Mr. Heseltine: All the measures we have taken to promote low-cost home ownership are relevant in inner city stress areas. Additionally, as announced on 9 December—[Vol. 14, c. 865]—a special allocation of £5 million will be made available for low-cost home ownership schemes in 1982–83. We have invited authorities to submit schemes which involve a high ratio of private to public sector finance.

Mr. Atkins: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that very detailed answer. What is happening to the pepper potting scheme for building homes on small sites in urban areas?

Mr. Graham: It is being assaulted.

Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. A number of volume builders in local authorities have been working together to explore how these small, vacant urban sites can be developed economically to provide low-cost housing. The first project in Bolton has been completed successfully and several others are planned or are under way across the country.

Mr. Stan Thorne: What will the Secretary of State do about the problem, in Preston and many other areas, of small children still living on the fourteenth floor of multi-storey housing blocks that cannot be demolished because of lack of finance for housing?

Mr. Heseltine: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not listen to what was said by my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction. Local authorities have some £400 million of underspent housing capital allocations available to them this current year, which they could have spent in the manner suggested by the hon. Gentleman.

Wales (Weather Conditions)

Mr. Ray Powell: (by private notice)asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will make a statement on the latest situation in Wales arising from the extreme weather conditions, in particular with regard to future water supplies.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Nicholas Edwards): The recent weather conditions created severe problems in many parts of Wales, but life in the Principality is now returning to normal. I have already paid tribute in the House to all of those who have had to cope with the emergency and I have made clear the basis of the Government's financial support for local authorities.
As the thaw developed, the problems that had been created by the snow were replaced by the problems of burst pipes and interruptions to water supply. But the water supply position generally is improving and the vast majority of consumers are being supplied with properly treated water at normal pressures. The water resources are entirely adequate, but there are local problems due to leaks in distribution systems. All those problems are being attended to as quickly as possible by the Welsh water authority. In some parts of Wales properties are still without water and every effort is being made by the Welsh water authority to reconnect the areas affected.
There will obviously be appreciable financial consequences of the emergency, in particular for the local authorities which had the primary responsibility for dealing with it, and for the farmers. It is far too early to make a realistic assessment of those consequences. We shall continue to assess the position as information about the costs incured by all concerned becomes firmer. Early on, however, the Government announced that the standing arrangements for financial aid to local authorities in an emergency would apply on this occasion, and I have already described those to the House.

Mr. Powell: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing the private notice question to be asked. The statement of the Secretary of State does not cover all the issues that should be discussed in the House, and time should have been made available for a full debate.
Does the right hon. Gentleman share the widespread concern about the statement on Monday by the Welsh water authority that unless severe restraints are imposed, Wales could lose its entire water supply within a matter of days? Is he not aware that water is gashing out from burst pipes faster than it can be replaced in the reservoirs? Is he aware that areas in West Wales, Anglesey, the Heads of the Valleys and elsewhere are in a desperate position? Will he assure the House that there is no danger from the pollution of water supplies? Will he promise the Welsh water authority Government financial aid to meet the additional costs of repairs and replacement of water treatment and pumping operations?
Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that industry and workers receive financial help to sustain the financial losses due to the weather conditions and the snow storms? Is he aware that in my constituency of Ogmore people made special efforts to accommodate and feed more than 1,000 stranded people for the best part of a week? Will he express justifiable thanks to them for their commendable efforts?

Mr. Edwards: I have already expressed appreciation in the House to all those, including private citizens, who helped to keep industry and life running in the Principality. I repeat my thanks and include the private individuals in the Bridgend area who were so generous.
On the hon. Gentleman's main point about water, the Welsh water authority was wise to warn of possible difficulties because of the loss of water from burst pipes. The normal consumption of water in the hon. Gentleman's area is 400,000 gallons a day. However, during the past few days consumption has risen to 1 million gallons a day because of numerous burst pipes. The hon. Gentleman greatly exaggerated the general position. The water supply is now under control and the water is fit to drink. Although I have details of certain areas where the water supply has not yet been connected, they are relatively few and reconnection is taking place quickly.

Mr. Geraint Howells: Will the Secretary of State confirm reports in today's newspapers that financial aid will be forthcoming from the EEC emergency fund?

Mr. Edwards: The Government submitted a prompt claim to the EEC Commission, which is being urgently assessed. Although the statement in the Western Mail this morning is inaccurate both on the amount of aid and the timing, it is hoped that the Commission will make an early announcement. I hope that aid will be forthcoming from that source.

Mr. Delwyn Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Powys, which has the greatest mileage per head of population in Britain, has received nothing but co-operation from the Welsh Office during the emergency? Is he further aware that none of its emergency services has been curtailed? Will he note the concern— [Interruption.] We would prefer the exclusive rate formula—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I was simply trying to restore order so that the hon. Member for Montgomery (Mr. Williams) could finish his question.

Mr. Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the weather guru, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell), is still remembered with some bitterness for the way in which he refused retrospective aid in emergency conditions?

Mr. Edwards: I pay tribute to the Powys authority which, throughout the winter, has been remarkably skilful in keeping the roads open. I speak from personal experience of the way in which it operated snow ploughs in appalling conditions, even in rural areas. I have praised it elsewhere, and I have pleasure in doing so again in the House today.
On the question of Government financial support, I confess that I do not recall the details of the timing of the previous announcement, but the special Government financial provision this time is intended to apply to the whole of the emergency period.

Mr. Alec Jones: I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to all those organisations and individuals in Wales who helped recently. It is not much use the Secretary of State simply saying that he is proposing the


same levels of aid as those given by the Labour Government in 1978. Conditions now are far different from what they were then. In 1979 we did not face such severe weather conditions, and local authorities and others were not expected to meet the same problems.
Throughout Wales there is a feeling that the right hon. Gentleman has been less than generous. Those words were used to describe the Government's proposals by the Tory deputy leader of the Mid-Glamorgan county council. Will he confirm that that council will have to spend the equivalent of a 2½p rate before it receives any Government assistance? Should not that matter be reconsidered when up-to-date figures are available?
Wales has been concerned about the water supply, and I am glad to receive the semi-assurances of the Secretary of State. They are only semi-assurances because he cannot possibly know every individual aspect of the water position, and nor can the Under-Secretary. Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the water authority has sufficient staff and resources to restore a full supply as soon as possible?
Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us how he proposes to spend money from the EEC fund? Will it be given to individuals and local authorities? Finally, will he tell the House of the effect of the bad weather conditions on industry in Wales?

Mr. Edwards: The level of aid depends on the extent of the damage and the total costs. The Government have made it clear that they will pay 75 per cent. of the cost of the emergency over and above a 1p rate inclusive of grant. If the costs are large, the Government's contribution will be that much larger. We will pay an appropriate share, and that seems right. It also seems right that local authorities should make some contingency provision every year for emergencies that always arise. That is the basis of the provision in regard to aid in excess of 1p rate inclusive of grant. That is exactly the system employed by the Labour Government in 1978–79 and local authorities needed to have no doubts about it, because it was clarified in a circular in December 1980. The product of a 1p rate inclusive of grant in Mid-Glamorgan is about £950,000.
The water authority is quickly restoring supplies. I am satisfied that its resources are adequate and I see no problems arising from that.
As for EEC aid, it would be right to have a detailed assessment of where costs have fallen and who has suffered most before we make final decisions on the distribution of EEC assistance. It would be useful to know the level of the assistance before making those decisions. We shall certainly look at the precedents and see what is the best way of distributing help if we obtain it.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that this is a private notice question and not a statement. It is an extension of Question Time. Exceptionally, I will call two more hon. Members before we move on.

Mr. Dafydd Wigley: Is the Secretary of State aware that many of those who have suffered additional costs need money urgently? Can he give an assurance that money for farmers will be forthcoming quickly and that local authorities will know exactly where they stand—with no chance of a cash cut-off—before they set the rates for next year, bearing in mind the legislation affecting rates that is going through Parliament?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, as well as farmers and local authorities, many individuals and families have suffered, particularly pensioners who have had to incur additional heating costs? Will he look at ways of helping them as well? As all eight counties in Wales had extremely severe incidents in a difficult period, we could have had a national state of emergency in Wales. Did he consider declaring such a state of emergency, as a Welsh Parliament would certainly have done, and did he approach any international agencies, apart from the EEC, for aid?

Mr. Edwards: I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's view of what a Welsh Parliament would have done. Local authorities know their responsibilities perfectly well. For a considerable period, they have laid snow emergency plans with the Government. Those plans are ready for implementation at any time and the responsibility for implementing them lies with local authorities. The one lesson that clearly emerges from the emergency is that it is right that the responsibility should be at a local level and the Welsh Office should primarily carry out the role of a centre of communication and information, directing resources when specifically asked for. One of those in charge of a county emergency department made it clear to me that even the emergency headquarters had to act in that way and that decisions had to be taken close to the ground.
Farmers understand that they have to accept the general burdens falling on them from adverse weather conditions, but I have agreed to see the NFU later this week to discuss the issues. Sir Richard Butler has confirmed to me that it is much too early to make any assessment of the costs falling on farmers. I confirm that the additional financial assistance from the Government arising from the emergency is not cash limited.

Dr. Ifor Davies: The Secretary of State is aware from his flying visit, for which I thank him, that no area suffered greater damage than the Gower peninsula, which was cut off for nearly 10 days, but is he aware that the provision of foodstuffs was ensured only by sea landings through the valiant efforts and initiatives of local people? Is he aware of the general feeling that much damage would have been avoided if the help of the forces had been ensured earlier? I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will learn the lesson that in any future crisis direction and leadership from the centre are necessary. The right hon. Gentleman has acknowledged the help given by local authorities, but that is not enough. Help and direction are needed from the centre, and that involves the Welsh Office.

Mr. Edwards: While expressing sympathy for the hon. Gentleman's constituents who suffered severely, I should say that the first task of the Welsh Office was to establish at the start of the emergency that troops would be available whenever required. I was in touch with the GOC Wales on the Saturday morning and we were in continual touch throughout. Whenever a local authority asked for them, troops were made available, as were Service men generally. However, the responsibility for asking for troops lies with local authorities, which know whether help is needed. Officials in Cardiff cannot know whether troops are needed in a village in Gower. When a local authority asked for troops the Welsh Office ensured


that they were available, and I congratulate the GOC Wales on the arrangements that he made to ensure that troops were provided.

Pressurised Water Reactor (Sizewell)

The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Nigel Lawson): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement about the public inquiry into the application by the Central Electricity Generating Board to build a pressurised water reactor at Sizewell in Suffolk. As the House will know, the Government are committed to holding a full and wide-ranging inquiry into the Sizewell application. In a written answer on 22 July last year, my predecessor set out the issues which the Government regard as relevant to consideration of this application. My right hon. Friend also announced the appointment of Sir Frank Layfield, QC, as inspector to the inquiry.
I wish to give interested parties the earliest notice of the date of the inquiry. I also wish members of the public and their representatives to have adequate opportunity to study the extensive information and documentation which will be provided. I therefore propose that the main hearing of the public inquiry should begin early in January 1983.
I have reached this view following recent consultations with those on whom the burden of preparing the principal documentation rests. The chairman of the CEGB has told me that the board expects to publish its pre-construction safety report at the end of April. Dr. Walter Marshall, as chairman of the PWR task force, will continue to co-ordinate the efforts of all the parties involved in the preparation of the report and will keep me informed of progress. The CEGB also intends to issue at the end of April a full statement in support of its application.
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive has told me that it expects to publish a report on safety issues by the end of June. There will, therefore, be an extended period for the study of both CEGB documentation and the NII report.
Earlier preliminary hearings will be held by the inspector at which those parties that wish to put their views before him on the general arrangements for the conduct of the inquiry and the scope of the evidence can do so at a time well before the main inquiry begins. The main hearing, and at least one of the preliminary hearings, will take place in Suffolk. I hope that arrangements can be made for the main hearing to be held within easy reach of the Sizewell area. An announcement on this will be made soon.
The Government are convinced that nuclear power has an increasingly important role to play in electricity generation in Britain. Nevertheless, any specific proposal has to be judged on its own merits. The arrangements for the Sizewell inquiry which I have just described will ensure that the CEGB's application is thoroughly and properly examined.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: The House is aware that the Select Committee on Energy published a report nearly a year ago on the Government's statement on the new nuclear programme and that the Government's response was published six months ago. Given today's statement, is it not a pity that there has not been a debate on those documents, which are relevant, both in general and in particular to the inquiry into the proposed PWR at Sizewell? Whenever a debate takes place—and it should be soon—it will be in the context of today's statement, but


it will be too late. For example, a section of the report deals with the public inquiry and we have not discussed it.
I note with satisfaction the right hon. Gentleman's concluding words that any specific proposal must be judged on its merits, for there is a strong case for having another AGR rather than a PWR. Does he not agree that American experience of the PWR is a cause for concern and that experience in the United States ought to be considered carefully during the inquiry?
Will cost factors be included in the inquiry, including environmental costs? Does the right hon. Gentleman regard the written answer of 22 July last year as carrying out the recommendation of the Select Committee—that he should publish the issues relevant to his consideration of the application? Is that what it was meant for? Does he accept that, because of the nature of nuclear power, with its horrific military antecedents and hazards that are intangible and invisible, the standard set should be far higher than for other industries? Will the CEGB statement include design details?

Mr. Lawson: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it would be desirable to have an early debate. I am sure that that is also the view of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I disagree that this will be too late. Indeed, I believe that it will be more valuable because it will take place after the Government have made their statement. As a result, we shall be able to take into account both the Select Committee's report and my statement. In making my statement, I have taken into full account the views of the Select Committee in its report.
Cost factors, including environmental costs, will certainly be taken into account by the inquiry. My predecessor who replied on 22 July made it clear that the three main areas to be covered by the inquiry as he envisaged it would be safety, environmental and economic.
The right hon. Gentleman somewhat inappropriately linked the military nuclear question with nuclear power. They are separate issues. Indeed, it is significant that much of the early impetus behind the desire to have a peaceful nuclear power programme was the desire of those involved in the war to beat swords into ploughshares—a wholly commendable endeavour. Indeed, that is what nuclear power can promise this and many other countries.
Of course, it is vital that our own high standards of safety should be fully satisfied. As I said a moment ago, that will be one of the main matters at issue in the inquiry.

Mr. Michael Ancram: Many Conservative Members will welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement of the date of the inquiry. Does he not accept that, in the light of the tragic smelter closure at Invergordon, and the apparently disastrous miscalculations on the cost of AGR-produced power, there is now an urgency to look at safe and cheaper ways of producing power, both in the interests of domestic consumers and, perhaps more importantly, of industry?

Mr. Lawson: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. May I hark back briefly to a further point made by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) which I did not answer? He asked "Why a PWR application rather than an AGR application?" In the context of what my hon. Friend

has just said, we felt it sensible to develop the option of an economic and safe nuclear alternative to the existing gas-cooled reactor.

Mr. Tony Benn: Will the Secretary of State give a clear undertaking that before the inquiry takes place he will publish all the information available to him, some of which was available to me as Secretary of State, including serious doubts about the inherent safety of the PWR design? Will he make all that information available? Secondly, will the inquiry be broad enough to allow people to argue that the money involved would now be better spent on insulating homes which would create jobs, save lives and save more energy than a PWR—even if it worked, which I doubt—could generate in the programme that he has in mind?

Mr. Lawson: The right hon. Gentleman's prejudices are well known. I am delighted to see him in the Chamber, particularly as he was unfortunately unable to be present yesterday when we debated a matter close to his heart.
A massive amount of documentation will be available—the pre-construction safety report, the NII report and the CEGB's statement of case. I believe that together they will provide a greater weight of documentation than has ever been provided before. All the other matters the right hon. Gentleman mentioned will be part of the subject matter of the inquiry.

Mr. John Hannam: Does my right hon. Friend accept that one of the reasons why it is vitally important to preceed with nuclear power for electricity generation is the whole question of providing electricity at low cost to industry? Has not the French experience shown that they are able to undercut us because they have embarked on a nuclear power programme? Will he therefore ensure that there are no long delays in the inquiry and in any subsequent follow-up to the building of a PWR if it is shown to be safe and cheaper to construct?

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend is right. The world has more experience of operating PWRs than any other reactor type. We must see whether this technology can be harnessed to our own domestic requirements, including our own high safety standards. I do not know whether my hon. Friend meant that we should get the inquiry over as quickly as possible. If so, I understand his views, but I cannot share them. In any case, it is for the inspector to decide how long it is necessary to take in order to have a full and thorough inquiry. He will take as long as is necessary for that purpose and no longer. I cannot say what will happen thereafter, because that would prejudge the outcome of the inquiry.

Mr. David Penhaligon: Will the Government give financial aid to those who will object in order to ensure that they do not lose their case through lack of funds?

Mr. Lawson: We have no plans to do so, and I know of no precedent for it. I am quite sure that there will be a full opportunity for those who object to make their case and have it fully and properly judged.

Mr. Nigel Forman: I welcome the Government's deliberate and cautious approach to this matter. Will my right hon. Friend say more about the NII? Is he now satisfied that it has enough qualified manpower to fulfil the vital safety tasks involved in such a project?

Mr. Lawson: Yes, I am satisfied. My hon. Friend may like to know that I understand the NII will be making a statement later this afternoon.

Mr. Peter Hardy: Should not the right hon. Gentleman's statement have been made either during or after the House had debated the Select Committee's report? When can we have that debate? Either then or before, or even now if the Secretary of State is prepared for it, will he say what the surplus capacity of the CEGB is?

Mr. Lawson: I thought that I had answered the hon. Gentleman's first point when I replied to the right hon. Member for Leeds, South. Both I and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House recognise that there is a case for an early debate and that the House would welcome it.
It is not for me to prejudge the economic case. That is one of the matters to be discussed in the inquiry. We are looking some way ahead and a number of existing power stations will be coming to the end of their lives by that time.

Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: Is the Secretary of State aware that the announcement of the date is fair, in view of the timetable prior to the inquiry, for all the representations to be made, not only by the governmental agencies but by other bodies, some voluntary and some private?
The Government, if they are still in office, will presumably follow the precedent set by the Labour Government and have a debate—with, I trust, a free vote—after the publication of the report and before a final decision is made. As that will be some time ahead—perhaps as long as two years or 18 months—will the Secretary of State reconsider the question of the House having a debate on the report of the Select Committee? It is important to have clarification.

Mr. Lawson: I think that there has been a slight misunderstanding. I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's endorsement of the timetable that I have announced. He speaks with some knowledge and expertise in these matters. Although it is not a matter for me, I shall bear in mind the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion of a debate. I have already told the right hon. Member for Leeds, South that we shall have a debate on the Select Committee report as soon as possible.

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet: As the Secretary of State is aware, there will be an open-ended inquiry, possibly followed by a debate in the House of Commons, followed by a seven-year construction period, which will bring us into the 1990s. Will the Secretary of State bear in mind the urgency for nuclear power? We shall have to move on to compete with France, as my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) pointed out.

Mr. Lawson: I am keenly aware of the urgency of the matter. A sad element of all this is the years wasted by the Labour Government. Nevertheless, however great the urgency, I am not prepared to foreshorten the time needed for the consideration of the papers that will be published, nor am I prepared to rush the inquiry, which must be full, fair and thorough.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. If hon. Members will be brief, I shall try to call all those who have risen.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: The Minister announced the chairman but not the members of the committee of inquiry. Will he let us know who the members will be? Will he consider Mr. Joe Gormley as one of them?
In addition to the safety of the establishment itself, will the inquiry consider the question of danger from terrorism, in view of what has happened in France in the last couple of days? It is important that we realise that an installation such as this is a sitting duck for terrorists.

Mr. Lawson: It is up to the inspector to decide whether a detailed examination of the issue of terrorism would be appropriate to the inquiry. He may or may not so decide; it is up to him. The hon. Member will be aware that there have been no such terrorist incidents in the United Kingdom.
As to whether Mr. Joe Gormley should be a member of the inquiry, there is one difficulty: there is no committee of inquiry and therefore there are no members of it. There is an inspector—Sir Frank Layfield—who has a secretariat.

Mr. Keith Stainton: As the Member for the constituency immediately adjacent to the proposed site, I feel obliged to press the Minister for a firm commitment to a parliamentary debate before he reaches any conclusion on the matter. A clear precedent for that is the Windscale inquiry. My understanding, as a result of correspondence that I have been having almost continuously for the past 12 months with his Department, is that such a debate will ensue, but the Minister has rather avoided the specific obligation this afternoon.
I am disappointed and concerned at the lack of funding for objectors. I well understand that there is no precedent for this, but I put it to the Minister that his ingenuity is such that it might be possible to find a way of funding via the CEGB, perhaps through a board of trustees. Not only must justice be seen to be done, and not only will this be a long, complicated and highly technical inquiry, but unless the matter is disposed of with some certainty at Sir Frank Layfield's hearing it will raise its head on each successive occasion that other PWRs are proposed.

Mr. Lawson: I fully recognise my hon. Friend's concern for his constituency. I have had representations not only from him but from my hon. Friend the Member for Eye (Mr. Gummer), who has been deeply concerned with the issue.
I shall bear in mind my hon. Friend's request for a debate before the final decision is taken, although, as I said earlier, it is not a matter for me. I appreciate the force of my hon. Friend's case.
With regard to funding, my hon. Friend mentioned the CEGB. It is for the CEGB to say whether it is prepared to do it. I was asked earlier whether the Government were prepared to do so. We have no such plans.

Mr. Bob Cryer: Is not the inquiry to be started because of the CEGB's application? Knowing that the Government are extremely sympathetic towards a Three Mile Island type PWR, is it not absurd to embark on this path when the CEGB has a vast over-capacity for electricity generation, when it is closing down plant after plant which are coal-fired, and when we have between 300 and 400 years of coal supply? Is it not nonsensical for the Government even to contemplate embarking on a further


programme of nuclear electricity generation, with all the potential dangers which this involves? Is it not really a first step in carrying out the Government's nuclear policy?

Mr. Lawson: The Government are interested in seeking to provide the cheapest possible electricity for our people. I am sorry that that is not an objective shared by the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Norman Atkinson: Has not the CEGB already decided to fund people attending the inquiry? Therefore, will the Minister reconsider his answer about the objectors who will be going to the inquiry? He is incorrect in suggesting that there are no precedents. There are precedents for funding objectors at public inquiries. It was suggested by an overwhelming majority of the participants in the debate in this House that that funding should be available. As I understand the position, the Minister's predecessors have also made recommendations about financial assistance being given to some of those who will be attending the inquiry as objectors.
Does the Minister agree that if the Government are to establish confidence in their nuclear programme they should be seen to be holding inquiries of this kind with the widest possible base, and that such inquiries need funding?

Mr. Lawson: I am not persuaded by the hon. Gentleman's argument but. as I have already said, it is my hope that there will be an early debate. I am sure that this question will be much discussed during that debate.

Mr. John Ryman: Does the Minister contemplate that this will be one of a series of inquiries? He will be well aware that the CEGB is contemplating an application to build a similar power station at Druridge Bay, Northumberland? Does he envisage a situation in which no final decision will be made by him and the Government, as a result of the recommendation by the inspector in the Sizewell inquiry, before other inquiries relating to applications in other parts of the country have been completed?

Mr. Lawson: As I see it—I hope that this will reassure the hon. Gentleman—the first step will be to conduct a thorough inquiry into the Sizewell application. Only after the outcome of that inquiry will further decisions fall to be taken.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is the Minister aware that, in addition to the points that have been made so well by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) and other hon. Members, there is a large and rapidly growing body of opinion—not confined to the mining industry, in which I have a deep and abiding interest—in

favour of running down our dependence on nuclear power rather than uprating it, as would happen if the proposed PWR were to go ahead? Would it not be more sensible, when we have more than 3 million unemployed, to concentrate on those areas where we have plenty of energy, especially in the pits, where there are vast reserves of coal and where more people could be employed provided that subsidies were on a par with those in West Germany and Belgium? If that were so, we could produce energy more cheaply for industry and therefore help in the fight against inflation. If that sort of attitude were adopted by the Government, it would be more welcome to the country at large and would reduce our dependence on nuclear power.

Mr. Lawson: The Government are satisfied that a safe and economic nuclear power programme is in the interests of the people of Britain and in the interests of employment. That is also the view of the trade union movement—even though the hon. Member is characteristically idiosyncratic.

Mr. Cryer: How can the right hon. Gentleman know? He has not had the inquiry. He is prejudiced.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Ryman), the Secretary of State said that this would be the first step and that various events would follow. What is the time scale envisaged? The Secretary of State must know very clearly that the nuclear manufacturing industry has a great problem in relation to time for orders. This affects not only the construction industry but many of our technological and science-based industries.

Mr. Lawson: The nuclear industry is not in as healthy a state as it might be, largely due to what happened in the wasted years under the Opposition, to which I referred earlier. Indeed, the announcement I made today will be welcomed by the nuclear power industry.

Mr. Dalyell: What is meant by "first step"?

BILL PRESENTED

STOCK TRANSFER

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by Mr. Secretary Biffen, Mr. Nicholas Ridley, Mr. John Bruce-Gardyne, Mr. Adam Butler and Mr. Malcolm Rifkind, presented a Bill to amend the law relating to the transfer, registration and redemption of securities, and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 50]

Data Protection

Mr. Michael Meacher: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the protection of data in accordance with the European Convention.
The Bill would enable in particular the setting up of an independent data protection authority as recommended by the Lindop committee in 1978.
The need for control over the collection and use of personal information has grown enormously over the last decade. I pay tribute to my many hon. Friends who have been active in this cause over several years and, in particular, to my hon. Friends the Members for York (Mr. Lyon) and Nuneaton (Mr. Huckfield), both of whom have presented Bills to meet this need.
A previous White Paper revealed that no fewer than 220 different functions of Government involve computerised personal information about identifiable individuals. Most of these computerised Government data banks contain anything from 10,000 to 1 million names. In addition, as the records become computerised, separate systems can be linked so that, for example, Government officials could have almost instant access to all the information now held separately on one individual—for instance, information about family relationships, previous and present addresses, criminal records, income tax and VAT returns, medical treatment including any history of mental ill-health, credit rating, social work reports, political and trade union activities and so on. I submit that legislative controls are needed to ensure that any Government, present or future, do not abuse the new technology in the name of efficiency or security.
That is, however, by no means the only danger. Computerised data banks are particularly vulnerable to espionage, eavesdropping and error. However, manually stored data banks can equally threaten the individual's privacy in several disturbing ways. Information on him may be collected unlawfully, by underhand means or without his consent. The information may be inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or irrelevant. Other people may have access either to some or to all of this information that he thought was stored confidentially and that they ought not to have. Information given for one purpose, wholly legitimately, may be transferred without his consent, and perhaps even without his knowledge, for an entirely different and perhaps highly embarrassing and damaging purpose.
This matter is serious because a person may suddenly find that, for totally unjustifiable reasons of which he may not even be aware, he is suddenly prevented from acquiring a credit card or he may be denied hire-purchase facilities. More seriously, information about criminal records going back several years, an investigator's report based on malicious gossip, or speculation about an individual's politics or sex life can suddenly block promotion or lead to abrupt dismissal.
Worst of all, simply wrong information being fed in, against which the individual at present has no defence, can do irreparable damage. I quote the case, recently reported in the newspapers, of Mrs. Jan Martin. While she and her husband were motoring on the Continent, a lorry driver saw them at a cafe in Holland and thought that he

recognised Mr. Martin as a member of the Bader-Meinhof gang. The lorry driver reported this to the Dutch police, who passed the information to London. Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Martin suddenly found herself barred from a job with a film unit under contract to a company that had by one means or another gained access to the information. It was only because her father happened to be a senior police officer with contacts at Scotland Yard that the whole truth came out.
I would add only that the National Council for Civil Liberties, to which I pay a warm tribute for its long-standing campaign for the right to personal privacy, has dozens of individual case histories of persons who have had similarly damaging experiences but have not had the benefit of such high-level and fortunate contacts.
One other relevant matter to which I draw particular attention is the police national computer, which now holds over 36 million entries, and the Scotland Yard computer, which by the middle of the 1980s will store information equal to that on one fifth of the population of the whole Metropolitan police area. As hon. Members will know, there have recently been several highly damaging leaks reported from these records.
It is interesting to see what the Lindop committee said about this. It was denied access by the Home Office to the plans for the Metropolitan police special branch computer. The Committee concluded:
We do not have enough evidence to give a firm assurance … that the public need not be unduly alarmed by the use of computers for police purposes.
Its scepticism has been corroborated by the report a week ago that persons were being entered on special branch files in Devon and Cornwall and, I presume, everywhere else, for such wholly inappropriate reasons as that they were anti-nuclear campaigners, that they opposed blood sports, or that they were members of the anti-apartheid movement. While, of course, one must insist that individuals cannot have access to criminal intelligence and genuine security files, I believe that we should consider the Swedish system whereby a duly authorised security-cleared person could inspect such files to ensure that they do not contain improper data.
Against this background, the Bill would aim to remedy the major threats against privacy which arise from several sources. For example, the use of most bugging devices and telephone taps is not at present illegal. It is not a criminal offence to obtain confidential information by deception or to release that information to others who should not have it. There is almost no right to bring an action for damages against an invasion of privacy. There is, with one exception, no legal right for the individual to see files kept on him or her, and criminal records are far from being entirely secure against the intrusions of private agents or employers.
Not only personal privacy but Britain's economic interests need safeguarding. The commercial director of Lucas Industries has recently been reported as saying that unless the Lindop committee recommendations are implemented urgently, British industry will be unable to move computer data freely between Britain and abroad and, therefore,
The British balance of payments will suffer dramatically.
For those reasons alone it is vital to bring Britain up to international standards in this respect
The Bill would do that because it is wholly in line with the Council of Europe convention for the protection of


individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data, which the Government have signed but not yet ratified.
In outline, the Bill would establish an independent data protection authority. I should like to make it clear that I strongly reject the view that has been floated that the Home Office itself should be the watchdog body for privacy legislation. That is wholly unacceptable.
The Bill would incorporate the substantive principles of the convention as I have indicated them. Specifically, it would give individuals the right to see and, if necessary, challenge and correct the contents of personal records held on them. It would require the operators of data banks, both manual and computerised, to register with the authority, and place a duty on the authority to issue statutory codes of practice, giving detailed guidance on how to comply with these principles. I emphasise that the voluntary codes of practice, which I gather the Government may be considering, are wholly unacceptable if the serious abuses that have been revealed are to be effectively redressed. The British Medical Association and many other bodies have rightly refused to countenance voluntary codes of practice. It would also give the authority the power to investigate complaints and ensure compliance with the codes of practice, with the power to de-register data banks that failed to meet the standards.
I believe that the Lindop recommendations command widespread support in this country. For too long Government have done nothing. I hope that all those who believe that personal privacy should be protected against the increasing encroachments of an authoritarian State will support the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Michael Meacher, Mr. Tony Benn, Mr. Andrew F. Bennett, Mr. Reginald Freeson, Mr. Les Huckfield, Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk, Mr. Ian Lloyd, Mr. Alexander W. Lyon, Mr. Michael Marshall, Mr. Christopher Price, Mrs. Renée Short and Mr. Richard Wainwright.

DATA PROTECTION

Mr. Michael Meacher: accordingly presented a Bill to make provision for the protection of data in accordance with the European convention: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 29 January 1982 and to be printed. [Bill 51.]

Orders of the Day — Criminal Justice Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Speaker: I must tell the House that a large number of hon. Members wish to participate in this debate.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. William Whitelaw): The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. William Whitelaw): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is a wide-ranging Bill, but most of its provisions relate in one way or another to the sentencing of offenders. Its primary purpose is to provide the courts with more flexible and effective powers for dealing with the diversity of offenders who come before him. This reflects the strategy with which the Government entered office and which we have pursued steadfastly.
In our election manifesto, we recognised the need for
more flexible, more effective sentencing
to take account of the need for tough sentences in appropriate cases and shorter custodial sentences in others; the importance of effective non-custodial sentences in which the courts have the fullest confidence; and the need; of victims of crime. I should make it clear that in our judgment "appropriate cases" means, in particular, those violent offences that are causing so much worry at the present time.
The Bill supports these aims. We have already carried out specific commitments, like the expansion of attendance centres and the experiment with tougher regimes in detention centres. The Bill gives us the opportunity to fulfil others.
In the last couple of years we have received a series of major reports. These have included the report of the Expenditure Committee, the May committee of inquiry the Home Affairs Select Committee and the all-party penal affairs group. We have set out our approach in our responses to these reports most recently in last month's debate on the prisons, and in our reply to the Home Affairs Committee's report on the prison service. I shall concentrate today on the contribution that the Bill itself makes to our wider strategy.
Part I of the Bill gives effect to the proposals that we published in our White Paper in October 1980, and makes long overdue changes in the sentencing structure for young offenders, those under 21. There is a great deal of public concern about criminal behaviour by young people. The Government share it. The courts in this country, and particularly the juvenile courts, carry out an immensely difficult task on our behalf. They must have a proper range of powers to enable them to do justice in the circumstances of each case, and to provide an apt response to public concern. They need flexibility. They do not have enough at present. We must have a sentencing structure which, while recognising that custody may be essential, secures that it be used only where necessary.
To achieve these aims, part I of the Bill abolishes imprisonment for young offenders, and with it the much resented restrictions that section 3 of the Criminal Justice Act 1961 placed on the passing of sentences of between six months and three years. It also abolishes the indeterminate sentences of borstal training. It replaces


them with a more flexible structure of detention centre and youth custody sentences whose length is, within statutory limits, to be determined by the courts.
Our policy is clearly stated in clause 1 of the Bill. No court may impose any custodial sentence on a young offender unless it is satisfied that no other method of dealing with him is appropriate. By broadening and strenthening existing non-custodial provisions, part I will assist the courts to avoid a custodial sentence except where one is absolutely necessary.
Let me remind the House that at present, if a court dealing with a youth of 15 or 16 comes to the conclusion that his offence is so serious that a custodial sentence is unavoidable, it has to send him to a detention centre for at least three months, or to borstal, which normally results in eight or nine months in custody. What we propose is a clear statutory prohibition on custodial sentences on offenders under 21 unless there is no other appropriate way of dealing with them. Additionally, we propose that in such a case a court will be empowered to impose a sentence of no more than three weeks. This gives effect to our policy that young people should be locked up only when it is wholly unavoidable, and then for as short a time as possible.
Thus the new detention centre order provided by clause 2 will have a new minimum of three weeks. In place of borstal and imprisonment for the under-21s, clause 4 provides the courts with the power to impose a new sentence of youth custody for the precise period, over four months, which they consider necessary. This new structure means that it is for the courts, not the Executive, to decide for how long a person should be deprived of his liberty. And, for the first time, time spent in custody on remand will count towards both the major young offender sentences.
The courts should as far as possible know what type of regime the offenders that they sentence will undergo. Under clause 10 a young offender with a youth custody sentence of more than four months but not more than 18 months will be detained in a youth custody centre. That guarantees a training regime, and it applies to a wider effective sentence band than the present borstal sentence. We do not yet have sufficient young offender training accommodation to give this guarantee to all youth custody trainees, but we are providing a framework that places as much emphasis as possible on training. It offers a choice to the courts, and it preserves the distinctive regime of the detention centre.
I turn to the non-custodial provision in part I. Clauses 15 to 18 deal with attendance centres and they largely consolidate existing provisions, but they make some small changes that will be useful, especially at a time when we are continuing with our expansion of the attendance centre system. In particular, clause 16 will for the first time give the Crown court power to make an attendance centre order in cases tried before it.
Clauses 19 to 24 contain most of the extremely important provisions that we intend to make to strengthen the confidence of the courts in non-custodial sentences for the under-17s. Clause 19 strengthens the supervision order. Existing powers enable substantial action to be taken by the supervisors—either local authority social workers or probation officers. We believe that supervision can be an appropriate way of dealing with juveniles, even

when they have committed quite serious offences. But the courts need to play a bigger part in the decision if they are to have confidence that a difficult youngster can be placed under supervision. Clause 19, therefore, gives the courts new powers under which they will be able, in consultation with the supervisor, to specify in the order itself what requirements the juvenile will be asked to comply with. There will, therefore, be discussion before the order is made between the bench and the supervisor about what is most appropriate for the offender, and the order itself will specify the activities in which the offender will participate.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Why has my right hon. Friend included the requirement that such conditions must be totally agreed to by the supervised person before the order can operate?

Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk: The order will not work otherwise.

Mr. Whitelaw: The requirement is included because it is important for the workability of the whole provision. My hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State reminds me that it is also the principle of the probation order. That also is very important.
Under the provisions of clause 20, the local authorities will become responsible for the provision of facilities, in place of the children's regional planning committees. They in turn will be obliged to consult probation and after-care committees about the arrangements made. Facilities for the supervision of juveniles need better local co-ordination, and clause 20 will provide this. There is also provision in schedule 9 to enable the probation service, for the first time, to provide from its own resources facilities for juveniles under supervision.
The Bill also tackles a problem that emerged almost as soon as the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 came into force and that has caused difficulty ever since. It arises when a child is made subject to a care order because he has committed an offence and then commits a further serious offence for which he is again brought before the court in criminal proceedings. Other than simply renewing the care order, there is little that the court can do to mark its further disapproval of the new offence, except, if he is aged 14 or over, to pass a custodial sentence. But our intention is to reduce the need for custodial sentences for young people. In these circumstances, too, we feel that the right way to achieve this is to give the courts more confidence in using the alternatives available.
Clause 21, therefore, gives effect to our commitment to introduce a residential care order. It provides that where an offender in care commits a further offence the court can, if the circumstances make it desirable, add a condition to the care order for a fixed period of up to six months. The effect of this is that the local authority's discretion to place the child with a parent, guardian, relative or friend will not, for that period, be exercisable. In this way the court can ensure that the offender is not returned straight home, and that the removal from home will be seen, both by the public and by the offender himself, as a direct result of the commission of the further offence and the court appearance. This represents a significant addition to the various non-custodial disposals available, and it is a power for which the courts have been asking for a long time.
These changes to the supervision and care orders will impose additional financial burdens on the local


authorities. It was made clear by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services some time ago that these provisions would be brought into effect only when the necessary additional resources were available. It is our intention to find those resources as soon as possible so that the local authorities can give effect to these new orders.
The Bill also provides, in schedule 10, for the extension of community service orders to 16-year-olds. They will be subject to the conditions that already apply to offenders aged 17 years and over, except that there will be a maximum of 120 hours instead of 240. Community service has already proved its value for the older age group. The number of orders made has continued to rise since its introduction, and the figures for 1980 show a proportionate increase in the use of community service for those convicted of indictable offences. Careful preparation will take place before community service is introduced for this age group, and I shall have to be satisfied that the arrangements are adequate.
I have often voiced our concern about the responsibilities of parents in relation to children who offend. There are at present rather complex provisions that enable the court to order parents or guardians in certain circumstances to pay fines, compensation or costs awarded against juveniles. We are convinced that the law can make a greater contribution. The changes made to these provisions in clauses 22 to 24 are therefore designed to strengthen and clarify the courts' powers.
The court must order that fines, compensation or costs awarded against a juvenile should be paid by his parents or guardian unless, in all the circumstances, the court thinks that it would be unreasonable to make them pay. The parents have a right to be heard and a right to appeal against the order.
There is also a useful power under which parents or guardians can be bound over for up to three years to take proper care of the child and exercise proper control over him.

Mr. Douglas Hogg: I can clearly understand why parents or guardians of young persons who fail to comply with a fine order should be made to pay in default. In effect, they will be guarantors. But I am not so sure that I see why the parents or guardians should be primarily liable to pay the fine. My right hon. Friend might care to amplify that.

Mr. Whitelaw: I must return to the point that it must be reasonable in all the circumstances. That underlies the position. It helps to show the parents and guardians their particular responsibilities.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I am not opposed to what the right hon. Gentleman proposes, but I should like a further explanation. At present, millions of pounds of fines have not been paid, and will not be paid, by convicted adult criminals. The Home Office refuses to do anything about the matter, and refuses to give the figures. What will happen if parents join the list and also refuse to pay the fines of their children?

Mr. Whitelaw: If I was to start to get into an argument with the hon. Gentleman on these matters I might prolong my speech, which would not be the wish of the House. The Minister of State will seek to reply at the end of the debate to what the hon. Gentleman said—

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I knew there was no answer to that.

Mr. Whitelaw: —provided, of course, the hon. Gentleman is here at that time.

Mr. John Carlisle: I am a little concerned about the certain circumstances in which the magistrates will not impose a fine upon the parents. How different is this Bill from previous Acts under which the magistrates had a get-out, as it were? They still have one under this Bill. I fail to see how there is any difference.

Mr. Whitelaw: This is to be argued during the passage of the Bill. It is simpler, and expressed in a clear way that emphasises the responsibility of the parents for their children.

Mr. Keith Best: Would not my right hon. Friend accept that in this clause he is introducing a concept of vicarious responsibility of parents that has not existed before? Is he aware that this is the case?

Mr. Whitelaw: I hesitate ever to enter the lists with lawyers, but I am assured that a principle of this sort has been in operation since about 1933.
I will continue, I hope, from where I left off. If they enter into an undertaking of that kind, a recognisance can be set up to a maximum of £200. Clause 24 increases that to £500.
Taken together, then, the custodial and the non-custodial provisions for young offenders in the Bill represent a major and overdue change in the sentencing structure, a change that is designed to ensure that for violent and other dangerous offenders custodial—and, if necessary, long—sentences will always be available. 1 share fully the concern that has been expressed by many hon. Members about the level of violent crime in out society. This is something that we cannot and must not tolerate. The maximum sentences already provided by law for crimes of violence are very severe indeed.
As regards the type of sentence to be selected by the courts, I note that, for example, the Lord Chief Justice has made it clear that in all but wholly exceptional circumstances those who commit rape must expect an immediate custodial sentence. It is right that society should mark its horror of violent crime in this way. But at the same time the courts will be offered a more flexible range of non-custodial sentences for use where the justice of the case does not demand that the offender go into custody.
We had a full debate before Christmas in which I explained the Government's policy towards overcrowding in the prison population. I do not need to go over that ground again. As the House knows, we intend to bring section 47 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 into force before Easter, when the necessary preparations have been completed. The new power will enable the courts themselves, in cases where a sentence of immediate imprisonment of six months but not more than two years seems inevitable, to reduce if they see fit the period actually to be served in prison. Clause 25 extends the scope and flexibility of section 47 to enable the courts to make maximum use of the power.
We are convinced that section 47 will be used to reinforce the welcome movement that we have already seen towards shorter sentences. There is an important provision in clause 25(4) that will contribute to this.

Mr. Kilroy-Silk: Could the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what evidence he has that the introduction of a


partially suspended sentence will reduce the prison population that is different from the evidence available to the then Minister of State when he spoke to the House in December 1979 and which was available to him when he wrote the review of parole in May last year, on both of which occasions it was said that the introduction of such a scheme would lead to an increase in the prison population?

Mr. Whitelaw: I did what I believe is right in a democratic system; I consulted widely all those concerned. The result of the consultations led me to believe that in the current climate of shorter sentences this would be the case. This is what those who impose the sentences, both judges and magistrates, believe. I have every reason to trust their judgment and I have done so. If it is to be said that I should not trust their judgment that would be a great mistake. I believe they will show that this power will work to the best advantage.
In this country our whole approach to sentencing has been based on the principle that within the framework set by statute it is for judges and magistrates to impose the sentences they deem appropriate in each particular case. I pay tribute to the way in which our under-provisioned prison system has coped with the pressures that result. I believe that this Bill, by reinforcing the movement towards shorter sentences, will help to relieve them. But we must recognise that the stresses that can occur within the prison system are, of their nature, never predictable. Pressures could arise which made it necessary, as a last resort, to take drastic action to avert the breakdown of the system.
Clause 26, therefore, incorporates in permanent form provisions for the early release of prisoners on the lines of section 5 of the Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act, which it supersedes. The use of the powers, if, indeed, it became necessary, would be subject to firm parliamentary control, with any order for early release requiring the approval of both Houses. These requirements are in subsections (7) and (8). The clause is thus subject to extensive safeguards. It would involve the release of prisoners who are due to become free within six months in any case; and categories of offender who have committed particularly serious offences could be excluded.
The Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act also introduced a power to enable magistrates' courts to remand accused persons in their absence. I think that it is generally agreed that that provision, when it was in use during the industrial action in the prisons, worked well. Certainly, no evidence came to our notice that it caused disadvantage to defendants. Clause 42 and schedule 8 together amend the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 to make such a power a permanent part of our law, as I foreshadowed in answer to a question by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) on 18 June last year. The provision does not apply to juveniles.
Remand hearings are very often short, with neither side making any application to the court other than that the case be adjourned and the defendant remanded. Where the defendant is remanded in custody, however, these weekly appearances in court are costly in terms of the police and prison manpower expended on escorting the prisoner to and in the court. A provision to remedy this was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims)

during the passage of the Criminal Law Bill in 1977. It was because of their concern about the resource implications of this aspect of remand hearings that both the Select Committee on Home Affairs in its report on the prison service and the parliamentary all-party group have suggested that provision be made that is broadly similar to my present proposal.

Mr. Clinton Davis: I am most grateful that the right hon. Gentleman is prepared so readily to give way. It is expected that it will be possible for an accused person not to have to appear for successive hearings. Does the right hon. Gentleman expect that in the interim it might be possible for the accused person to be represented? Given, I think, the Lord Chancellor's suggestion that unnecessary appearances by a lawyer might not be reimbursed, what is the position if the accused is represented under legal aid? If the accused's non-appearance is permitted under those circumstances, does it not follow that he is highly unlikely to be represented by a lawyer, particularly when that lawyer will not be reimbursed?

Mr. Whitelaw: I think that my next remarks will deal with the points that the hon. Gentleman has raised. If they do not, the Minister of State will supplement my remarks later.
Both groups of hon. Members would prefer to see only two successive remand hearings taking place in the defendant's absence. As the Government have explained in the recent White Paper, replying to the report of the Home Affairs Committee, we are more than ready to hear argument on this point, but it is reasonable to allow three successive remands without the defendant being present.
Fears have been expressed in some quarters that the rights of the accused will in some way be undermined by the proposals. I think that that was the point made by the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Davis). But, as provided in paragraphs 3 and 4 of schedule 8, a hearing in the defendant's absence will be possible only if he is legally represented and gives his consent. It will be open to him, after giving his consent, to withdraw it at any time and so secure his production before the court. I therefore see no reason to fear that a defendant's rights will be diminished. I hope that the House will support these proposals under which, if a reasonable number of defendants elect to take advantage of the provision, some much-needed relief will be provided for the hard-pressed police and prison services.
The various provisions that make up the rest of the Bill reflect our commitment to strengthen the provision of alternatives to custody and to do more to meet the needs of victims of crime, who often feel forgotten. The probation service is the major agency for dealing with offenders in the community. In the debate on the prison service on 2 December I was able to inform the House that additional provision was planned for the service for 1982–83. We have all been encouraged by the increased use both of the probation order and of the community service order. If the probation service is to continue to respond to this challenge, it is right to allow greater responsibility at the local level. The Bill provides an opportunity to relax some of the controls over the service that are now exercised by central Government. These changes in clause 43 and schedule 9 have been agreed with the service organisations, and are intended to allow the


service to operate more flexibly and to be better able to use new opportunities. There are also minor changes in court procedures in connection with probation orders and community service orders, which should simplify the current arrangements. The Bill makes provision for the transfer of community service orders between the various jurisdictions in the United Kingdom.
Parts III and IV deal with fines. The significance of the fine is clear from the fact that in 1980 fines were imposed on over half the offenders sentenced for indictable offences in magistrates' courts. The great majority of those sentenced for summary offences are fined. To keep the use of the fine at these high proportions, we must ensure that the maxima for individual offences are not so undermined by inflation that they become no more than tokens, causing the courts to look to other, and perhaps less cost-effective, sanctions. Fine enforcement machinery must be as effective as possible.
Until now, the revision of maximum fines for summary offences has been a slow and piecemeal business. Criminal Justice Bills have brought some fines up to date, and others have been revised when there has been a Bill on the topic to which the offences relate. But a large number of fine maxima remain outdated, and the penalty structure for summary offences generally suffers from gross inconsistencies.
Part III of the Bill for England and part IV for Scotland lay the basis for a more rational and cohesive penalty structure. They introduce a standard scale of fines for summary offences and assimilate all maxima in Acts to that scale. The Bill takes over the fine level scale established by the Criminal Law Act 1977, updates to it all maximum fines for summary offences in Acts unaffected by that Act or subsequent Acts, and assimilates to the levels on the scale all summary maxima so that they may be altered by order. Some adjustment of the broad effect of these provisions in relation to particular penalties is carried out in parts III and IV and in schedules 1 to 7.
Clauses 37 and 38 make improvements in the law on fine enforcement procedures. Clause 37 gives effect to a proposal by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders working party on fine default that a magistrates' court should be able to set a time when a person ordered to pay a sum by instalments should appear before it if at that time any instalment remains unpaid. It also gives a court power to vary the number, amount and timing of instalment payments of a fine. Clause 38 provides for the reciprocal execution with Northern Ireland of warrants of commitment to prison for fine defaulters.
The need to pay special attention to the victims of crime is an issue, as I have said, to which the Government attach the greatest importance. The Bill provides a timely opportunity to extend and to clarify, in the interests of the victims of crime, the general compensation power in section 35 of the Powers of Criminal Courts Act 1973. We consider it right that where an offender's means are limited and he cannot afford to pay both an appropriate fine and the appropriate compensation, the interests of the victim should prevail over the interests of the Crown and preference be given to the ordering of compensation. Moreover, if the court in a particular case sees fit to dispense with a fine completely, leaving the compensation order as the only sentence imposed, we think that it should be free to do so. That is already the situation in Scotland under the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980.
We also want to make it clear that the courts can order the compensation that they think appropriate in a particular case, without the precise value of the victim's loss necessarily having been agreed or proved. That will rectify the results of certain court cases, which have had restrictive effects on the use of the powers of the courts to make compensation orders. Clause 44 gives effect to those changes.
I firmly believe that the Bill offers Parliament the opportunity to enhance the ability of the courts to deal effectively and flexibly with the offenders—especially young offenders—who come before them, in a way that should preserve public confidence in the ability of the system to deal firmly and fairly with offenders. Its provisions reflect strong commitments on the part of the Government. It honours pledges entered into in our election manifesto. The Bill is being brought before the House at a time of increasing public and parliamentary concern about the process of sentencing offenders. Wider and more informed discussion of these issues is very much to be welcomed. It is in that spirit that I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Roy Hattersley: The Bill was published on 2 December and on that day we debated an Opposition motion concerning what we called the
crisis in the prison service.
The Home Secretary properly used his speech on 2 December to set out some of the proposals of what was then the Government's brand new Bill. He will not quarrel today with the contention that 2 December was at least a prelude to a major part of the debate today concerning part II.
I do not propose to repeat what I said six weeks ago to justify the assertion I then made that our prisons are an affront to a civilised society and that their overcrowding is a threat to the maintenance of law and order. On part II and the issue of custodial sentences, which must dominate our consideration of the Bill, I simply repeat what I said before Christmas: we send too many people to prison in Britain, and many of those who must receive custodial sentences are imprisoned for far too long. The corollary of those two contentions is that we continue to neglect at our peril paying proper attention to non-custodial sentences.
I suspect that in general the Home Secretary agrees with all three particulars I have given. Yet, before Chistmas, he could not accept the Opposition's motion calling for action to reduce the prison population, and he gave two reasons why. First, he said that the prison population was beginning to fall and would continue to do so, and he gave some recent evidence for that. He said that the prospect of today's Bill was a justification for the contention that the fall was likely and perhaps even certain.
The second point was that he said that he could not
directly reduce the numbers of people sentenced to imprisonment and the length of the sentences imposed."—[Official Report, 2 December 1981; Vols. 13/14, c. 286.]
The Home Secretary's contention was clearly and obviously wrong. The size of the prison population is crucially affected by the length of sentences prescribed by law, the alternatives to prison that the law allows and provides, and also by the law's provisions on remand,


parole and release. It is against the belief that the prison population should be reduced and that the Home Secretary can act to reduce it that we must judge the Bill.
There is no doubt that part II and in some ways part I will result in young offenders not being in forms of custody exclusively intended for their age groups, but will result in some of them becoming part of the prison population.
We must also judge the Bill against the limited criterion of its effect on the prison service and what is done about the gross overcrowding in the prisons. The Home Secretary has quoted the clauses on probation and fines which direct our attention to the alternatives to custodial sentences, but, by the Government's admission, most of the Bill is about custodial sentencing or residential care. Indeed, paragraphs 2 and 3 of the White Paper on young offenders—on which part I of the Bill was largely based—goes out of its way to state that, while imminent legislation will be concerned with custodial sentences and related matters,
the Government attaches the greatest importance to the use—in appropriate circumstances—of alternatives to custody as well as shorter sentences.
Some provisions included at the back of the Bill move in that direction. However, in our view, they do not move far or fast enough.
I propose to discuss not what I regard as the Bill's omissions but its contents, about which three things can be said. Some of the Bill's effects will be to reduce the length and extent of custodial sentences and some, I fear, will undoubtedly increase the number of persons detained in one sort of institution or another. However, numerically the most important section could reduce the number of persons in custodial sentences or increase it according to how the powers are used by the courts.
In Committee we intend to table amendments to ensure that the new sentences, techniques, attitudes and proposals are, whenever possible, used to reduce the prison population by reducing the numbers sentenced to custodial sentences and reducing the length of sentences when they are inevitably imposed. It will be on the Government's reception of the amendments made with that specific intention that we shall judge the Bill on Report. We certainly do not propose to divide against the Bill, as it contains good aspects on which we believe it is possible to build, but our continued support depends on the Government's co-operating with us when we make what we hope are entirely creative suggestions for ensuring that the new sentences and powers are used in the way that I believe the Home Secretary and the Government intend.
My comments refer largely, although not exclusively, to part II, but before I turn specifically to it I must tell the House of the Opposition's attitude to part I concerning the treatment of young offenders. I shall begin with the proposals concerning offenders under 17 years of age. The Children and Young Persons Act 1969 provided for the phasing-out of penal custody for children less than 17 years of age and that principle seems entirely right. We must, as far as we can, prevent the incarceration of children in institutions of any sort as a process of punishment. Yet the provisions of part I may result in the reverse of that process.
The retention of detention centres for male offenders aged between 14 and 17, the youth custody sentences and,

particularly, the introduction of residential care orders, may combine to result in more 14 to 17-year-olds passing through some sort of compulsory detention than in the past. That is wholly undesirable, not least because we know about the effects of custody on that age group. In 1977, 76 per cent. of all youths leaving detention centres and 83 per cent. of all youths leaving borstal training were convicted again within two years. Those figures do little to convince us of the remedial effects of such institutions.
Residential care orders are not likely to provide much better results. They are a concession to the belief that the best thing to do with disturbed or difficult children is to lock them away. I know that there is no organisation concerned with difficult children that approves of or supports the residential care order notion. Indeed, the local authority directors of social services who will have to operate the scheme oppose it root and branch in principle and in practice, not least because, as they rightly said, the scheme will cause the diversion of the most needed and necessary resources from the general work of social welfare.
The Secretary of State, when dealing with these provisions, promised to provide resources as soon as possible. We all know that "as soon as possible" is often a very long time. It seems tragic, at a time when the social service departments of local authorities are dealing with more and more families and children in desperate need, and in view of the limited resources of local authority budgets, that money might be diverted to what I regard as a generally undesirable practice. However, I am even more concerned about the potential results of what is proposed for detention centres.
I am deeply sceptical about the very concept of the short sharp shock. In so far as the new detention centre proposals are intended to facilitate such a regime, they are more the product of party politics than of careful penal research. That is probably common ground on both sides of the House. I prefer the approach that was proposed by the Labour Government in a Green Paper. They proposed one system of youth imprisonment and the same humane, educative and rehabilitative treatment for all offenders.
Clause 2(5)(b)(i), (ii), (iii) and clause 3 seem in one sense to be an improvement on what has previously been proposed for detention centres because the maximum sentence will be reduced from six months to four months and the minimum sentence that may be imposed will be reduced from three months to three weeks. Clause 2(1)(b)(i) provides that such a sentence may be imposed by the courts when they consider
that the only appropriate method of dealing with him"—
that is the sentenced person, and this provision applies only to males—
is to pass a custodial sentence".
In describing the clause, the Home Secretary referred to it as a statutory prohibition, which seemed in the best use of the term to be strong language. He said that it meant that those in this category could be locked up only when it was absolutely necessary. That was a categorical description of the meaning of the clause.
I am sure that all those who have had Bills drafted for them will be aware of the virtues of including clauses that rely on the judgment of the person who will operate them, the person who will do something which in his or her judgment is right. That is the sort of clause that appears in the Bill as clause 2(1)(b)(i). It is when the courts decide that a custodial sentence is the appropriate sentence to be


passed that such sentences are allowed. That allows the courts to send young men to detention centres unfettered by legislative guidance. It amounts to them making up their own minds with nobody being able to challenge them.
As a result, two things may arise from the new shorter detention sentences. First, young men who are likely to benefit from detention centre regimes may receive a shorter sharp shock. I suppose that that is the logic of the White Paper, which provided that the deterrent effect of such a sentence is likely to diminish after the first few weeks. If the courts choose to use their powers in that way—I put it in the vernacular by describing it as a shorter sharp shock—some benefit will accrue. The young man will discover the salutary effects and he will perhaps return to sin no more.

Mr. Best: When did the right hon. Gentleman come to the conclusion that there was something arcane in giving to the courts the power not to send a young person to prison unless they were satisfied that it was the appropriate way of dealing with him? He knows that that is the way in which the courts have been dealing with young offenders for a long time. Where has been his opposition to that in the past?

Mr. Hattersley: That is not quite how the courts have been dealing with young offenders. The courts have had prohibitions placed on their behaviour, part of which they have resented and part of which have been cleared up by the Bill. As I understand it, the Bill is supposed to be a general improvement. I am suggesting further improvements which implement what I understand the Home Secretary wants.
If the intention of the detention order is that persons who would have received a short sharp shock are now to receive a shorter one, there is much to be said for what is proposed. However, if young men who previously would have received non-custodial sentences will now go to detention centres because the judges will say "Three weeks is not long in these men's lives" or "After all, 22 days may do them some good"—I paraphrase what the judges might say, but I accept that their language is more elegant than mine—the net result will be more young men passing through detention centres. That will be the result if a judge sends a young man to a detention centre for three weeks when he would not have dreamt of sending him to such an institution for three months. That will be wholly wrong.
Are these provisions to be operated so that the same number of young men go to detention centres for shorter periods or are they to be operated in the way that was suggested in The Daily Telegraph of 4 December, which will lead to more young men going to detention centres? The second operation of the provisions would be undesirable not least because of the record of what happens to them when they leave the detention centres.

Mr. Percy Grieve: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that a period in a detention centre may now be a very short one and that the Bill abolishes detention centre sentences of six months which formerly prevailed? I always thought that it was a mistake to send anyone to a centre for six months. I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that there may be many who will be in detention centres for far shorter periods.

Mr. Hattersley: If the hon. and learned Gentleman will cast his mind back a full two or three minutes, he will

recall that I said that that was the alternative. If the result is that young people are sent for this form of training and improvement for brief periods, I shall welcome the provisions despite my reservations about the concept of detention centres. The hon. and learned Gentleman must agree with me that within the powers of the Bill it will be possible for the courts to say "As we can send young men to these centres for brief periods of three weeks or a little more, we shall send them there for that period when prior to the enactment of the Bill we would not have dreamt of sending them to the centres for two or three months." That seems to be a mistake. That is what was described by The Daily Telegraph, which sometimes speaks for those on the Conservative Back Benches, as the intention of the clause.
That is not the intention—I give the Government credit for this without a moment's hesitation—of paragraph 3 of the White Paper. That paragraph makes it clear that the preferable of the two options that I have described is what the Government intend and propose. To facilitate the Government's wish, we propose to table an amendment—assuming the Bill is given a Second Reading, we shall be able to do it tonight— which incorporates the idea that the shorter sentence will be imposed only when there is no other reasonable alternative. I hope that that will limit the number of potential detainees in detention centres.
The ambiguity of the way in which the provision may be implemented is mirrored in part II, where in one important particular there is the option for the courts to apply a new proposal in two distinct ways, one of which might be of benefit and one of which would be of great detriment. Before dealing with part II, I have more to say about the section on young offenders. I ask the Minister of State to answer some specific questions if he catches the eye of the Chair at a later stage.
I generally support the idea of one youth custody sentence as in a sense a move towards the single sentencing policy that was embodied in the Green Paper. I am in favour of the amalgamation of prison and borstal and the introduction of determinate sentences. I am obviously in favour, as are all my right hon. and hon. Friends, of remand time counting against sentences. However, a number of questions need to be asked.
Paragraph 19 of the White Paper, on which this section of the Bill is based, reads:
all young adult offenders receiving short to medium term sentences of youth custody will be guaranteed a place in a training establishment.
Obviously we support that, but what will happen to young adults who are sentenced to four months or less and ale judged unsuitable for detention centres? Are we to assume, as I fear they will, and as did 185 offenders last year, that they will go with adults into the debilitating, dispiriting and undermining regimes of our old prisons? What will happen to young adults who receive sentences longer than 18 months? The White Paper is specific about that category, or as specific as White Papers ever are. It states that places in training establishments, so far as vacancies permit, will be provided for them. However, it states that no individual, that is, an individual over 18, can be guaranteed such a place.
I hope that the Minister of State will tell us that the Government are taking steps to match the resources to the aspiration of providing training for all those people. It is intolerable that a young man sentenced to more than 18 months should be sent to a prison where there are three in


a cell locked up for 23 hours a day and provided with no rehabilitative services. I hope that the Minister of State will tell us how the aspiration of the White Paper is to be made a reality.
The resources that might be made available for that necessary training could be obtained more easily if money were not spent in the prison service on the unnecessary imprisonment of men and women who should not be there in the first place. Keeping men and women in prison is an expensive business. I said on 2 December that in our view there were many things that could be better done with the money.
It is in that spirit that I turn to part II. I shall begin with clause 26. The Home Secretary said nothing about it other than acknowledging its existence. I do not complain about that because in such a discursive Bill Front Bench speeches are bound to be discursive. He will understand why I want to pursue the idea of clause 26 in a little more detail than he did.
Clause 26 allows the Home Secretary to grant early release to persons of any class specified in the order, that is necessary to bring about their release. The Home Secretary is entitled to grant early release if he is satisfied that such a step is necessary
to make the best use of the places available in places for detention.
He is limited only by his own judgment, apart from two requirements. One is that no early release is possible for men and women serving life sentences. None of us would disagree with that. The other is that release can be granted only within six months of normal release dates.
Such power has been at the Secretary of State's disposal for almost two years. We need to know, if we are to take this part of the Bill seriously, the circumstances in which he envisages using that power. It has been stated by the Home Office that early release will be granted if there were such an outbreak of widespread violence that the prisons became intolerably overcrowded. I tremble for the Home Secretary who goes to the 1922 Committee saying that Britain is now so violent that we must start letting people out of prison early. That is a perverse proposal.
My answer to the question is simple. The Secretary of State should use that power immediately. The people on whom he should use the power are those who should not have been in prison in the first place—those who are there for soliciting, vagrancy, drunkenness and fine or maintenance defaults. Those are the circumstances in which I should like to see clause 26 used. The time to use it is now. I fear that the Home Secretary will not agree with me.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Resolved, 
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make further provision as to the powers of courts with regard to the sentencing and treatment of offenders, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase in the sums payable out of such money under any other Act of Parliament which is attributable to the said Act of the present Session.—[Mr. Gummer.]

Minister for the Civil Service (Transfer of Functions)

10 pm

Mr. Alan Williams: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Transfer of Functions (Minister for the Civil Service and Treasury) Order 1981 (S.I. 1981, No. 1670), dated 24th November 1981, a copy of which was laid before this House on 1st December, be annulled.
The order is the latest in a series of Prime Ministerial campaigns against the Civil Service and civil servants. It is paradoxical that we are discussing it in the week in which we have read in The Guardian that, much as the Prime Minister is known to despise civil servants, the new director of marketing for the Conservative Party intends to use the Civil Service—the Central Office of Information—to sell the Government.
Before coming to the substance of the order, I should tell the Minister of State, Treasury that I hope that he will make it clear to the new political appointee that any political use of the COI by the Government would be a major abuse of public resources and would inevitably lead to intense questioning and discussion on the Floor of the House.
In a way, it is appropriate that I should be present at the demise of the Civil Service Department, because as the Parliamentary Secretary in the now extinct Department of Economic Affairs, I was in at the birth of the CSD. I joined Lord Shackleton and the late Lord Armstrong in the preparatory work to the setting up of the Department in the 1960s.
It is clear to us that the debate and the order have little to do with the machinery of government and are a continuation of the Prime Minister's vindictive vendetta against civil servants. She is still smarting from the fact that they dared last year to oppose her unilateral tearing up, without consultation, of a 25-year-old agreement on how pay was settled in the Civil Service.
The order has to be seen, not in isolation, but in the perspective of other attacks made by the Prime Minister and her Ministers. Soon after coming to office she attacked the indexation of Civil Service pensions, discreetly ignoring the fact that the same privileges extend to the Armed Forces, the police and teachers. She stirred up a major public campaign against civil servants.
That action was an early warning of the Prime Minister's stubborn determination to get her own way with the Civil Service. Even after her contentions were rejected by the Government Actuary, she set up what she thought was a stacked committee—the Scott committee—which, in turn, rejected her prejudices and confirmed the advice of the Government Actuary on Civil Service pensions. From an early stage, we have seen the build-up to the order.
Indeed, we have even seen the ludicrous situation of the honours system being used by the Prime Minister as an industrial relations weapon. Like many of my hon. Friends, I do not believe that civil servants should expect honours as a right after so many years' service. They should be treated on the same basis as any other group in society. On the other hand, I disagree with the timing of

the action, which is clearly an attempt to use the Royal Prerogative to underwrite Prime Ministerial spite towards civil servants.
This order is the right hon. Lady's response to the fact that the civil servants had the temerity to exercise their legal and democratic rights to oppose and resist her disastrous campaign to destroy without consultation existing pay procedures within the Civil Service. The order is an act of petty spite masquerading as a contribution to efficient Government machinery.
The Prime Minister is humiliated by the reality that as a result of her campaign against the civil servants, by the end of December interest charges on uncollected taxes alone cost between £400 million and £450 million. That is on the admission of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That result of the right hon. Lady's vindictiveness is increasing at the rate of between £50 million and £60 million each month.
The Minister knows as well as I do that a settlement could have been reached at a respectable level in the early days of the dispute, but by the end of this financial year the Prime Minister's vindictiveness will have cost the Chancellor more than £500 million in interest charges alone on uncollected tax revenue. When one thinks of what that could mean for expenditure on schools, education, hospitals, the Health Service or kidney machines for children and adults, one realises the magnitude of the Prime Minister's bitterness and understands the extent to which she is willing to push her vindictiveness when she gets involved in a campaign.
Nothing else explains why in January 1982 we are facing the absolute reversal of the position adopted by the Prime Minister in January and February last year. She then rejected any merger. Indeed, she said that if a merger went ahead
all concentration would go on reorganisation rather than on dealing with the true problem".
If that were true of a straightforward merger, how much more true is it of splitting a Department's responsibilities, with all the overlap and anomalies that arise?
The only material change since the right hon. Lady made that statement is that we have been through the quite unnecessary and avoidable Civil Service dispute, calculatedly and deliberately stirred up by the Prime Minister who at a time of political pressure was in search of an easy victim that she thought she could bully into submission. The civil servants did not submit, and the country is still paying, and will continue to pay, the cost of her campaign.
The Prime Minister told the House that, despite her original thoughts on the subject:
I have decided to strengthen and improve the existing organisation of the CSD"—
not to modify, change or split it—
rather than merge the two Departments".—[Official Report, 29 January 1981; Vol. 997, c. 1070.]
A month later, having had time to consider the position even further, the Prime Minister could still see a "logical cohesion" in the role and functions of the Civil Service Department. Yet by November of the same year she had discovered that it had become increasingly difficult to separate control of expenditure from manpower. By November, on the Chancellor's figures, it had become between £360 million and £410 million more difficult to separate control of expenditure and control of manpower. All that was a result of the unnecessary dispute with the civil servants.
The Prime Minister's confusion, her emotional involvement and irrationality in dealing with the issue were shown when she said that putting responsibility for manpower into the Treasury would lead to much greater efficiency. Yet she went on to say of the manpower and personnel office within the Cabinet Office:
Much of their main work will be in improving efficiency".
Ambivalence and split responsibility pervade the whole of her conduct with regard to this aspect of policy.
Later the Prime Minister compounded the situation that she had created by saying:
The unions will deal both with the Management and Personnel Office and with the Treasury, according to the matters involved in the consultations.
However, it has already been shown that there is such an overlap in the responsibilities of the two Departments, particularly with regard to industrial relations, personnel and manpower, that confusion and inefficiency are already creeping into the system of consultation.
The resulting administrative confusion only mirrors what emerges from the Prime Minister's statement to the House—her intellectual confusion arising from her emotional involvement in the issue of the Civil Service. Paradoxically, a little later on the same day the Prime Minister praised the Civil Service Department, which is being eliminated because of its efficiency, for reducing its staff. She said:
In the past few years the CSD has reduced its own staff by about 10 per cent."—[Official Report, 12 November 1981; Vol. 12, c. 661-4.]
Those conflicting statements typify the confusion that the Prime Minister has created. The Minister of State has said that under the CSD the Government's plans for slimming the manpower of the Civil Service were being fulfilled ahead of schedule. The Minister may correct me later if I am wrong.
The lack of reality in the Prime Minister's position was shown in her answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) on the same day. As an ex-Civil Service Minister he said that now that the responsibilities had been transferred to the Treasury the Civil Service unions would not be happy with being diverted to junior Ministers; they would want to fight their campaigns right the way through to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It has been suggested that the Chancellor is a fairly busy man. Perhaps the Prime Minister sees some advantages in diverting the Chancellor from blindly meddling in the economy to becoming sunk in the morass of the problems in the Civil Service. However, she dismissed the idea that the civil servants would want to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She said that, after all, the Minister of State had just been transferred from the CSD to the Treasury.
I know that the Minister will not take my remarks in any personal sense, but he knows—as I did when I had similar status in the Labour Government—that at the end of the day people who disagree with what a Government are doing, no matter how good their relationships may be with a middle-ranking or junior Minister, will still want to persist and take the matter to the appropriate Cabinet Minister who has the power to take decisions.
As the Minister will be aware, in the recent dispute it was on occasions Lord Soames whom the Civil Service unions insisted on seeing, despite the fact that there is a good accord between the Minister and certain of the trade union leaders. Therefore, it is absurd to think that in the new circumstances the Civil Service unions will be fobbed

off with seeing the Minister of State, or with seeing the new spokesman in the Lords, Baroness Young, who is now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster but who will have no power or authority whatever in decisions concerning the Civil Service. They will want to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
It is well known that over the past 18 months the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been trying to avoid having the extra responsibilities of the CSD imposed upon him, because he feels that he will not be able to give adequate time and attention to the significant problems that will inevitably now land on his desk. So we have the absurdity, if we take an industrial parallel, of the finance director taking over responsibility for industrial relations.
The Minister of State must, with his own experience of the Civil Service, know very well that this is a situation which can only undermine whatever minute amount of good will may remain between the Government and the civil servants. Indeed, I doubt whether relations with the Civil Service have ever been as bad as they are now. There is no problem so bad that it cannot be made worse as a result of the right hon. Lady's determined attention to it.
By their action the Government have worsened their already deplorable relations with the Civil Service. The action was taken without any consultation. The Prime Minister said, in effect,"We cannot consult; we have to tell the House first". Yes, the House has the right to hear the decision, but the Civil Service unions have a right to be consulted. We are not asking that they be told the decision in advance, but there should be full consultation. In her arrogance and her contempt for the civil servants and those who represent them, she brushed them aside as though 600,000 of them did not exist, and as though the unions which represent them had no right of participation in policy involving their members.
The worsening of relations was exacerbated by the Prime Minister's comment. to which I have already referred, that it had become increasingly difficult to separate control of expenditure and control of manpower. Those words have an ominous ring in view of the fact that we are about to enter into a new regime concerning pay negotiations for the Civil Service. It must throw great doubt on the meaning and the significance of the Government's undertaking that, if necessary, they will go to arbitration this year on Civil Service pay. It is clear from line after line in the Prime Minister's statement that she is saying that in future negotiations on Civil Service pay—not other pay—will be subject to the whim of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That is the situation which in the 1950s a Royal Commission said was deplorable and should be avoided, and it said that a system to give objectivity to Civil Service pay should be introduced. The system that was introduced under a Conservative Administration and accepted by successive Administrations was wilfully torn up by the present Prime Minister.
By the change that the Prime Minister has introduced, through the greater control of the Cabinet Office over appointments, by the greater role that the Treasury will play in determining the pay levels of civil servants, by her alienation in the past 12 months of those who are normally instinctively loyal to Ministers of the day, the Prime Minister has taken steps which I suspect we shall subsequently regret and which are likely to lead to the


greater politicisation of the Civil Service. That is a step for which no future Government of any political view will thank the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister's decision is a calculated snub to civil servants. It is a rebuff to the Select Committee which unanimously rejected the abolition of the Civil Service Department. It is a reversal of the Prime Minister's position of less than a year ago.
The final nonsensical words on the efficiency of the new system are that the Prime Minister and her Ministers have now, under their new regime, recently appointed a new chief executive for the Property Services Agency. Previously that position was held by a civil servant. It was held by a second permanent secretary at the high cost of £30,495 per annum. Under the new regime, introducing the greater efficiency that the Prime Minister is seeking, someone has been brought in from private industry. Instead of at the gross overcost of £34,000, we now have him available at the bargain price of £50,000.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: I should like to ask the Minister five brief questions about the order. I am grateful to the Opposition for giving hon. Members an opportunity to ask these questions.
The first and obvious question is: what benefit will result from the transfer of function which has been put forward in the order? It is not terribly clear. Despite the points made by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), it would be helpful if the Minister could record what would be the advantage of this move.
Secondly, does not the Minister see a danger that in the absence of a separate Minister basically to fight the corner for the civil servants, they might feel that they were being treated worse than other Government employees? I would not suggest that the present Government or any other Government are not wholly united in coming to decisions. However, in practice, we know that if there are negotiations on the wages of teachers, teachers are usually reassured by the fact that the Secretary of State for Education and Science, although a member of the Government, is probably in a position to fight their corner and ensure that they get a fair deal by comparison with other people.
In the same way, nurses, who are generally upset by negotiations, know at least that the Minister for Health, although again a member of the Government and part of the collective team, is there to ensure at least that they do not suffer more than Government employees generally. I wonder whether there is not a danger in abolishing what was a separate Department of making civil servants feel that they do not have a separate person to fight their corner.
Thirdly, referring to the point raised by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West, will the Minister give a clear assurance that, as a result of the transfer of function, there will be no change in the terms of the agreement which was made after the troubles last year—the agreement which solved the basic problem over wages. One of the ingredients of that was that there would be a form of arbitration this year, although it was made clear that if the results of arbitration were unacceptable on important grounds of national considerations, it could be overturned.
It would be helpful if the Minister could make it clear that this arrangement for arbitration will not be affected in any way by the transfer of function.
Fourthly, I wonder if the Minister could indicate whether the actual arrangements for this transfer will not hold up in any way the possibility of the parties arriving at fair arrangements for pay negotiations this year. I say this because, although there has been a pretty sharp recovery, particularly in the revenue-collecting sections of the Civil Service, a particularly good recovery from a problem which cost the Government a great deal of money, it would be a mistake to over-estimate the state of morale of the Civil Service at the present time. Whilst I am sure that they accept, like all sensible people, that no individual group in this community can expect to get extraordinarily high wages, it is very important, irrespective of any settlement reached, that there should be a feeling of fairness. My fear is that after the troubles and the cost to the Government of the strike last year, not having struck for such a very long time, they will have learned a great deal and the problems this year could be worse, if there were to be problems.
My final point is quite an important one. Because this Government, rightly, and, I believe, with the full support of the majority of people in the country, are trying to ensure that while private industry has had to reorganise itself to cut down on the numbers it employs and to become more efficient, the same criteria have been established for the Civil Service. This means that, as with private industry, it has experienced problems with reduction of numbers, vacancies left unfilled, and consequent reductions in promotion opportunities. Thus there are problems in the Civil Service which did not exist before.
In these circumstances, it would be helpful if the Minister, as I am sure he will do, will make it clear that, despite the problems of last year and despite the difficulties that might arise, the Government, like their predecessors, are very grateful indeed for the fact that we have generally a Civil Service which has the highest standard of integrity, honesty and efficiency in the world.
It is unfortunate that, because of the reorgansations we have had, the impression has been created in some quarters that some individuals do not fully appreciate the fact that, although I am sure there are many Departments which could become more efficient, particularly in view of problems in other countries, some far away and some closer at hand, we are very fortunate indeed in the standard of our Civil Service in this country. I hope that the Minister will make it absolutely clear that this Government fully appreciate the very high standards of integrity, efficiency and honesty which we have in this country and which do not exist in some others.

Mr. Robert Sheldon: The hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) is quite right to draw attention to the qualities of our Civil Service. It is because of this that it is so surprising that the Government are acting in the way they are. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) pointed out, we have a Government who are really against the civil servants of this country. This is the first time in the history of Britain that we have ever had a Government who really dislike the civil servants they employ. The Minister, who understands these things, well knows the problems he


faces in trying to convince the civil servants that they have a future in the administration of this country of a kind not dissimilar to that which they have enjoyed for centuries.
The Prime Minister shows that day after day in her actions. She even declines to mouth the usual platitudes about the standing of civil servants which every Prime Minister automatically utters on coming into office and repeats at fairly regular intervals. For a Government that talk about the need for good industrial relations, the kind of relations they have at the moment with their own employees are really quite deplorable.
There is no advantage to the Government. My right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West spoke of the cost to the public sector borrowing requirement of the VAT and PAYE that have been lost. It is even more than he suggested. He was right to draw attention to the amount of interest charges that the Government have had to bear as a result of not bringing in the revenue that was expected, but the position is even worse, because some of the VAT that has been lost will never be obtained. The same is true of PAYE. When the Government are still trying after 12 months to obtain the money, some of it will inevitably be lost to the Exchequer. The Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise are familiar with the problem and are doing their best to mitigate it.
There has been much need for reform in the Civil Service. The difficulty in the past has been to interest Ministers, and particularly Prime Ministers, in the need. Any change in the Civil Service will take five or six years to bring into effect. The continual curse of government is that the immediate always has priority over the important. As a result, there is little ministerial input.
The present Prime Minister has given attention to changes in the Civil Service that is without parallel, certainly in this century. The great pity is that it has not been given to the important reforms that could have been made. The right hon. Lady is concerned only with numbers and the disciplining of a Civil Service which she believes has got out of hand. Her attention and interest might have met the need for concentration on the genuine reforms that could be made.
There has long been a need for a study of the tasks of the Civil Service. As the Fulton committee said, the basis of the examination of the work done by the Civil Service should be to look at the jobs and find the best and most suitable talents to do them. With only a small proportion of the energy that the Prime Minister had devoted to reducing the numbers in the Civil Service, she might have been able to do something about bringing the right kind of talents to bear on the right kind of jobs. She might have done something about making the Civil Service more open, ending some of the multiplicity of grades and reserved jobs, so that talents, wherever they may be found in the Civil Service, can be mobilised to deal with the particular problems to which such people are best suited.
The Prime Minister is not interested in reforms. She is not happy with the Civil Service. She is not happy with the numbers in it and wants to reduce them and to discipline the service.
I think of the tasks that could be done admirably by others. Let us take the Department of Industry as an example. How many civil servants in that Department come from industry and have an understanding of it? We need people from outside the Civil Service to come in at more senior levels than at present to give their expertise to various Departments, and then, having obtained an

understanding of the Civil Service, to go outside, That necessary cross-fertilisation is not easy to achieve. What is needed is a determination which few Ministers have given to the study of these matters. The Prime Minister has the determination, but she is directing it in the wrong way, and to the wrong ends.

Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark: I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend's flow—[HON. MEMBERS: "He is not your right hon. Friend."] We served on the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service together. Anybody who does that must be a friend to survive.
Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is proper for any Government and any responsible Parliament to concentrate on the fact that private industry has had to make sacrifices of numbers to be competitive? The right hon. Gentleman talks as though nobody should make any cuts in the Civil Service. It is essential to make such cuts if there is to be room for private industry to survive, let alone thrive.

Mr. Sheldon: I shall deal, not with the narrow point, but with the more general point that the hon. Gentleman has rightly made. The number of civil servants is always important. However, the Government give it such overriding importance that they are not interested in seeing the Civil Service's tasks and how they are related to the demands made on it and the things that can be done. They are interested only in reducing numbers and in restoring the discipline that they feel has been relaxed over the years. It is difficult to do that. The Civil Service Department should have been in the forefront, because it was set up to stimulate and reform the whole Civil Service machine. It did not work out like that, because of the lack of interest on the part of Ministers as a whole. Ministers have not been interested. The Prime Minister could have used her new-found interest to obtain the fundamental changes that are as difficult to achieve as those that she is achieving in a much more restricted area.
The Treasury and Civil Service Committee--of which I had the honour to be Chairman of the Sub-Committee for a while—came down against the merger and the Government agreed with the report. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West pointed out, between January and November there was a fundamental change of mind. The Government are not given to making U-turns, or at least not to publicising them. Why, then, did they make that change during those critical months? They came down firmly on one side and then moved in the opposite direction. We know that the answer is that the Prime Minister felt that she was dealing with an indisciplined body that had to be brought to heel. She could do so only by placing the functions of pay in the Treasury, where there are tough people who know how to deal with money. She was not much concerned about the rest and threw it into the Cabinet Office. The Treasury can deal with pay and numbers, but it will not do much to improve the Civil Service. The Treasury does not like man management and is not well equipped to deal with it. It has performed badly in the past. As the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Douglas Wass, said, in a most enlightening answer to question No. 932 in the first report of the 1980–81 session of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee, when the iceberg broke—when the Treasury functions were split between its ordinary functions and


Civil Service Department functions—he was happy to be on the right side of the iceberg. What does that mean? It means that his career would be in the interesting part of the Treasury and not in the dull and deadly part of dealing with the trade unions.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West is right. The morale of the trade unions is low. They are much more alienated than they used to be and they will not be satisfied with seeing the Minister, much as he may be admired by individuals in the Civil Service. They will not be satisfied with the Minister and will go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The buck will find no stopping place short of the Chancellor's overloaded desk. That is inevitable. The rest of the Civil Service will go to the Cabinet Office. The Cabinet secretary and permanent secretary to the Treasury will be joint heads of the Civil Service.

Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth: There will be three.

Mr. Sheldon: Hon. Members should not believe that. There will be only one head of the Civil Service, because the only job that matters at that level is the chairmanship of the senior appointment selection committee. He decides who the next permanent and deputy secretaries will be. In the past, that task has resided with the Civil Service Department. He had virtually no other power, yet that power is going to the Cabinet Office. He has an enormous day-to-day contact with the Prime Minister and controls the Cabinet agenda, the honour system, Civil Service promotion, the Civil Service college, Civil Service contracts and their security and is responsible for business appointments of those previously Civil Servants and he has control of the public appointments unit. What a great power to give to an individual. We are creating one of the most powerful men in Britain. We are only fortunate that we have Sir Robert Armstrong, a great public servant in the finest tradition of the service. We must ask how long these traditions can remain in the light of such power.

Mr. Charles R. Morris: My right hon. Friend was right to refer to the power that certain permanent secretaries hold. However, ought he not refer to the glaring omission of the Statutory Instrument? That makes no reference to the fact that there are now two heads of the Civil Service where, hitherto, there was one.
This must be the first time in the history of the Civil Service when a Government, dedicated to cut back the number of Indians, have increased the number of chiefs.

Mr. Sheldon: I grant that in name there are two heads, but, in practice in terms of power in the Civil and Government Services and wider than that, we are creating one of the most powerful men in Britain who can make or mar any career in the public service, when he enters, takes part in or leaves that service. That is the danger we face and that power makes most of the United States White House Secretaries green with envy when they see the sort of power we are creating as a by-product—without thought or consideration—as a result of this order. Such a creation ought not to be made as an incidental to this transfer of functions.
The Prime Minister has missed a great opportunity for reform which her energies allowed her to have. She has committed serious errors and I believe that the order should not be accepted by the House.

Mr. John Garrett: The debate on this order is historic in its way, as it marks the end of the only serious attempt in 100 years to reform the British home Civil Service. With the passing of this order we consign to the archives the most radical public document put before the House since the Second World War—the Fulton Report of 1968. That is what the higher administrative Civil Service—the mandarins—have wanted and have striven for in the past 12 years since that remarkable report was published. They have won.
The power that matters has been returned to the Treasury; and all the great reforms proposed by Fulton, to make ours a more managerial, technically competent and more responsive Civil Service and a Civil Service capable of anticipating and meeting the challenges of the late twentieth century, have been brought to nothing. However, the issue will not rest there. The pressures and the problems which gave rise to the need for Civil Service reform and the need for a Civil Service Department to drive it through are building up again and I am sure that the measures set out—[Interruption.]

Mr. Alan Williams: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. An hon. Member has just meandered into the Chamber and he is clearly utterly uninterested in the debate and is carrying on a conversation as if he is still in the smoke-room. Could he not be asked to either listen to the debate or, at least, accord to hon. Members the courtesy to go back from whence he came?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bernard Weatherill): Order. With great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, that is a matter for me and I have not heard any conversation going on since I was talking.

Mr. Garrett: I had noticed the tiny Tory teenybopper, the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg), sitting on the Front Bench and I thought it best, as all hon. Members seem to do, to ignore him.

Mr. Roger Moate: On a further point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Could it be that hon. Members find it difficult to follow another hon. Gentleman who appears to be reading his speech verbatim? Will you rule, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether it is in order for the hon. Member to read his speech in that way?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Faversham well knows the answer to that question. The debate must end at half-past eleven and the Minister said that he wishes to reply at ten minutes past eleven.

Mr. Garrett: The problems and pressures that gave rise to the need for Civil Service reform and the need for a Civil Service Department to drive it through are building up again. A future Government of any complexion will have once again to create a unified management structure for the Civil Service that the Civil Service Department represents.
I am sure that the measures that are set out in the order, which were introduced in a fit of pique by the Prime Minister over the success of the Civil Service strike, will be shown to be quite inadequate. In that event we shall have to reconsider the issue.
It has been suggested in the correspondence columns of The Times that there was no need to create the Civil Service Department and that the Department did not spring from the findings of the Fulton report. It is said that they were wished upon the Fulton committee by the Prime Minister of the day, my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson). The proposal to set up the Department that appeared in the Fulton report arose from field research that was undertaken by the staff of the Fulton committee, of which I was one. There was no doubt that the conditions of management that we found in the Civil Service could be rectified only by the creation of a Civil Service Department.
How could the conclusion be otherwise? The Fulton investigations revealed longstanding and serious weaknesses in the management of the Civil Service which were attributable directly to Treasury control. A new direction was needed. A fundamental change in the people who ran departments was imperative. There was a need for a change of style from administrative to technocratic and managerial. That is what we found when we examined the Civil Service. There had to be less secrecy, more accountability and a new emphasis on training and developing talent.
These initiatives could not have sprung from the Treasury. It was the Treasury that had suppressed them in the years before. There had to be new and powerful machinery at the centre of Government to produce and implement them. The machinery was the Civil Service Department. It was made powerful because the permanent secretary at its head was called the head of the Civil Service and because the Prime Minister was its political head. Yet by 1970 the CSD had shown itself to be ineffective in implementing the reforms that had been proposed in the Fulton report and endorsed and supported by the then Government. In the first two years and for some time afterwards it did valuable and underrated work in improving efficiency and in training, but as an engine of reform it failed. It failed because no Prime Minister after 1970 understood the importance of its work, because successive Civil Service Department Ministers did not carry sufficient political clout and because it was sabotaged by the higher Civil Service.
I do not want to criticise the late Lord Armstrong. However, it is on public record that Lord Armstrong was chosen as the first post-Fulton head of the Civil Service to establish the weight and power of the CSD and to implement the Fulton reforms when he did not believe in the reforms. That was bad enough, but the sabotage was carried out by the permanent secretaries, who were outraged by the Fulton report referring to them as amateurs when for decades they had been calling themselves intellectual colossi. They were determined never to give up one iota of departmental autonomy to a central Department concerned with efficiency.
It is true that permanent secretaries and their clones—deputy secretaries and under secretaries—are the creme de la creme of the intellectual output of this country, but they are also managerial amateurs. The damage that they have done to Britain's post-war performance is incalculable. Oxbridge and public school historians and classicists who join the Civil Service at 21 years and never leave it—most of them fall into those categories—are by education, training and experience incapable of managing

an advanced twentieth century State. They cannot grasp quantifiable techniques of management or technological or social issues.
The central crucial task of the CSD was to change that top management cadre—

Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Does the House have no protection against the constant chat from the Government Benches? Those of us who want to follow the debate think that some manners might be shown.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is a legitimate point of order. It is difficult for the Chair to hear chat that is carried on quietly under the breath of hon. Members. It would be appropriate if the hon. Gentlemen concerned carried on their conversations outside the Chamber.

Mr. Garrett: The urgent task of the Civil Service Department, in which it failed, was to change the top management cadre of the Civil Service. Fulton said that preference should be given in recruiting to the top management stream to people with relevant degrees in the social sciences, science and technology. The universities forced the abandonment of that recommendation. Fulton said that a unified grading structure should be created so that people with specialist qualifications could compete for the top jobs. The mandarins put a stop to that because they saw it as a threat. Fulton said that a powerful Civil Service college should be created, but the Civil Service college has been hopeless as a means of developing a managerial rather than an administrative style in management, although it has done excellent work at lower levels.
The first principal of the college, Professor Grebenik, told a moving story in the annual report of 1976, which he made on the eve of his retirement. He said that he had never been told what the college's objectives were supposed to be; it was a prime target for cuts in expenditure; its academic staff was treated as inferiors by its administrative staff; it had no support from Departments; its trainees were not given any opportunity to change things when they returned to their Departments; it was never entrusted with any research work and its only training of top management was a two-and-a-half day course for newly appointed Under-Secretaries.
With no effective move towards unified grading—I should like the Minister's current views on that issue—and no effective use of the college as an agent for change, it is no wonder that the top management staffing and structure of our Civil Service is as archaic now as it was before the Fulton Committee was set up.
There can be no comparable organisation in the world that has so eccentric a view on how to organise and staff its top management. The British Civil Service prevents technically qualified staff from attaining top management jobs. Administration trainees—the high flyers or crown princes—who are destined for top jobs, are still overwhelmingly public school, Oxbridge arts graduates, recruited on a model of excellence laid down by the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854. The situation is becoming worse.
The scores of engineers, technologists, architects, social scientists and accountants recruited every year by the Civil Service are recruited to separate career grades, so that, however good their qualifications and however


skilled they are in management, they can never become permanent secretaries, deputy secretaries or undersecretaries.
Moreover, the Civil Service still has an organisation structure that separates the specialist and qualified staff from the administrative line, thus bearing out the traditional British nostrum of experts on tap but never on top. Worse still, in order to preserve the lay purity of the generalist admistrator, he is shifted from job to job so that he never masters the subject with which he is supposed to be dealing.
Our research for Fulton showed that administrators changed jobs at two-and-a-half to three-year intervals. Nowadays I understand from answers to parliamentary questions that the interval is 18 months to two years on average in a given job. However, the specialists—the advisers and technically qualified staff—stay in their jobs for a lifetime, so that they are always faced with the problem of giving advice on technical issues to lay generalist administrators who are newly arrived in a job, or about to leave for somewhere else.
The Civil Service Department failed in the promotion of efficiency. The Fulton Committee recommended high level audits of departmental efficiency. The Civil Service responded with management reviews. I was engaged on the first of them. Management reviews were studies of the efficiency of the Department controlled by the Department. It is no wonder that they never worked.
All that could have been changed. The Civil Service Department could have been made the engine of reform that Fulton intended. If Ministers had insisted that it set about the task of developing a new management and that it had the right to go into a badly-managed Department, make it efficient and reorganise it, the Fulton aims would have been realised. That could have been done when my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) was Minister for the Civil Service. It could still be done now. However, the present Minister has shown that he is unable to grasp those issues. A good example of that is the way in which the Wardale report was handled. It shows the way in which the establishment of mandarins is still leading the Government up the garden path.
Not long ago the Prime Minister came to the conclusion that there were too many levels or grades in the upper hierarchy of the administrative Civil Service. She was not original, but she was right. That fact had been pointed out before. She set up the Wardale committee to see whether certain levels could be omitted, but the mandarins drew up the terms of reference explicitly excluding staff in the specialist hierarchies. The main reason for too many levels in the administrative hierarchy is that they are not integrated with the specialist hierarchies. If one excludes the specialists, it naturally follows that there are not too many administrators. That is precisely the conclusion of the Wardale report.
How the Minister, who I understand was a technical civil servant and was, if he is not now, a member of the Institution of Professional Civil Servants, could allow the terms of reference to be written to such a disadvantage to specialists in the Civil Service amazes me.
The CSD is still the right machinery to improve the management of the Civil Service. The proposals are inane. How on earth can it be right to put pay in the Treasury and industrial relations in the Cabinet Office? How can it be

right to put manpower control in the Treasury and efficiency in the Cabinet Office, when efficiency is all about manpower control? How can it be right to put the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency under the Treasury when the Treasury has never shown any interest in innovation in computing? They are simply expedients. It is taking a hatchet to the machinery of government; letting one lot fall here and another there, without a rational analysis of the need.
The CSD should remain. Ministers could still use it to promote efficiency. Above all, Ministers should rebuild morale in the Civil Service by reinstating a system of fair pay based on outside comparisons. One cannot expect an organisation like the Civil Service to perform well when it is so often discriminated against in pay settlements and when it is known that its political masters despise it, loath its functions and want to abolish them as far as possible and have no interest at all in the welfare of the people who work in it.
The proposal is a gross error. It has been done on a whim. It has never been thought out. With the abolition of the CSD the Minister has thrown away the last chance that we shall have for some years for an orderly and systematic reform of the way that the Civil Service operates.

Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth: The functions affected by the measure have been the subject of debate for a long time. The striking feature of the Government's proposal is that it has never been suggested by a Select Committee, Sir Derek Rayner or anyone else. The Government have pulled the proposal out of the air for the reasons suggested and for others, and they are ending up with the worst of both worlds.
Although I do not agree with the argument, it can be said that the functions should be totally within the Treasury, as they used to be and as Sir Derek Rayner suggested. It can also be argued that there should be a separate Department. But we are ending up with a right old muddle, as the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) illustrated, by having some responsibilities in one Department and others in another. A proper personnel and management function cannot be carried in any organisation with such a split. I fear that the Government will go no way down the road towards the extra efficiency and cost cutting that they wish to achieve.
It has been implicitly or explicitly accepted by previous speakers that the CSD was not a success. It was not the engine of reform that it should have been. It did not carry the weight in Whitehall or among Ministers that it should have done, but that is not a case for abolishing it. I shall not further argue the case for the CSD, as this is a short debate. A Select Committee examined the matter in considerable detail and, after sifting through all the evidence, concluded that the Department should remain in being.
There is another alternative which could be a success and achieve some of the things that Fulton expected the Civil Service Department to achieve. I believe that there is a case for splitting the Treasury and having a finance Ministry and a Department responsible for expenditure and for the manpower functions of the CSD. The muddle created by the Government will not achieve the benefits either of retaining the CSD as a separate Department or of the arrangement that I have outlined.
Another major criticism of the Government's arrangements should greatly concern the House itself, in that the allocation of ministerial responsibility is totally inadequate. The Prime Minister has overall responsibility and the right hon. and noble Lady the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is responsible for the management and personnel office and the Minister of State answers to this House both for the functions of his Department and for that large area of responsibility which lies with the Cabinet Office, with which, from answers that I have received from him, he apparently has no contact and for which he has no responsibility. There is therefore a whole area of vital responsibility within the Government which hon. Members have no clear opportunity to question or call to account in the House.

Mr. Charles R. Morris: Will the hon. Gentleman enlighten the House as to what the SDP thinks about having two heads of the Civil Service where hitherto there was one, bearing in mind the contraction that has taken place in the Civil Service in recent years?

Mr. Wrigglesworth: It is even worse than the right hon. Gentleman suggests. There are in fact three heads of the Civil Service, as Mr. John Cassels is the second permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office; so there is the head of the Cabinet Office, the second permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office and the permanent secretary in the Treasury. in addition to all the spread ministerial responsibilities for these matters.
Finally, I believe that a major reason behind the change, apart from the kind of antagonisms that have been mentioned, is that the whole thrust of the Government's policy has been anti-Civil Service. They have pandered to and indeed built up public prejudice over a period and they wish to claim that they have not only cut the number of civil servants but actually abolished a Department. That may sound very good on presentation to the public, but they are simply masking the fact that they are creating a worse situation in the organisation of manpower in their own Civil Service.
Instead of concerning themselves merely with cuts, cuts and more cuts, the Government should consider how they might run their machine more efficiently and achieve the improvements to which the hon. Member for Norwich, South referred—better and more cost-effective management and more. cost-effective use of resources in Government. That will be achieved only if, like any other organisation, they have the personnel function in a separate department containing all the responsibilities within it rather than splitting them up as the Government propose.
I very much regret the changes that the Government have introduced. They deserve to be rejected today.

Mr. Peter Viggers: If it was incorrect to accuse the Government of being anti-Civil Service before the debate, it is now quite preposterous to do so. We have listened to a diatribe read to us by the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett). We have heard the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) recommending more interchange between civil servants and people in industry and elsewhere. Preceding them both, the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) produced as his coup de grace—a little dead

rabbit from a crumpled hat—the fact that an appointment had been made at a senior level to the PSA, which fulfils exactly the requirement that there should be an exchange between senior civil servants and those in industry.
I agree completely that there should be such an exchange. In the United States, there are 2,500 appointed positions in Washington which allow considerable interchange between the views of those in the professions and industry and those in government. Those who have been in government go back and enrich and enliven the private sector. In France, it is recognised that the Polytechnique produces senior civil servants who quite often leave the civil service at a medium level and go into industry. That, too, is accepted. I have no complaint when senior or medium-level civil servants come out of the service and take senior positions in banking or whatever it may be. They, too, can be helpful to those industries. The right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne is quite correct, and the major argument of the right hon. Member for Swansea, West was quite wasted.
I wish to make only one point, and I put it to the Treasury Bench in the form of a question. The Civil Service is our biggest business and is perhaps the best candidate for improved efficiency by way of computerisation. There are two ways in which this improvement can go. Either the improvement can be accepted, with the Civil Service welcoming the opportunity to increase its efficiency by using new techniques, or the service can adopt a Luddite attitude and say that it will have computerisation and improved technology only if there is no loss of jobs, which would be a reactionary and unhelpful attitude.
My reason for making this point is that there is an article in this week's edition of The Economist in which it is said that
the civil service unions have told the government they will not work any new technology equipment unless they receive an assurance from the cabinet that no civil servant will be laid off as a result … the treasury has been in favour of giving such an assurance in order to 'maintain goodwill'.
The article is either unhelpful or misleading, and it would be useful if my hon. Friend could comment on it.

Mr. Richard Wainwright: I, too, am grateful to the Opposition for enabling us to have this debate. But no amount of informed speeches can dispel the air of profound unreality which pervades debates on the control of the Civil Service. I felt just the same about the pleasant and stimulating sittings of the Select Committee under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon): although the issue was an interesting one to discuss, nothing that we decided would enable the uncontrollable to be controlled.
If any civil servant—apart from the top echelon—were asked to judge between control by a Lord President of the Council preoccupied, very successfully, with Zimbabwe, and a Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster preoccupied with the intricacies of leading the House of Lords, he would be tempted to use the words of an oriental potentate who was unwisely called upon to judge the finals of the Cleethorpes bathing beauty contest and dismayed the populace by saying "Both are worse".
In our present system of government, there is no political mileage in successful control of the Civil Service because there is not sufficient continuity in government to


enable anyone to achieve demonstrable results. Until we have a system which provides some element of continuity between one Government and another, this matter will never be tackled seriously. Furthermore, until people have the humility, modesty and humanity to realise that a Civil Service on the scale of ours cannot be controlled en bloc by any Minister, there can be no change. If the Archangel Gabriel were made the Minister in charge of either of these functions in the Treasury or in the Cabinet Office, the scale of the operation would frustrate him.
This becomes clear when one goes locally to a splendidly run office with various sections and a good manager who keeps up local morale. That is fine. But as soon as one goes outside the purview of that office with a query and asks whether they can get some results out of another part of the Department, it becomes apparent that morale is at rock bottom. No one has the slightest faith in any part of a Department that is outside his immediate purview. Often people hold up their hands in despair and ask how they can get any sense out of a computer or a Ministry. Until we have a federal Britain with manageable units of Government, we cannot control the operations of public service.
In the remaining few moments, I wish to give two examples. It is clear that in public affairs we need a far more realistic approach to cost-effectiveness. Yet there is no provision for that in any Department of State, except defence where the constraints of NATO make it necessary that we somehow stagger into line with our more advanced NATO partners. Members of the Select Committee gained some satisfaction when, having been told by heads of Departments that cost comparisons with overseas countries, even as near as Holland and Belgium, were too difficult, we heard from the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Defence a clear acknowledgment that NATO must discover whether it is cheaper for the Dutch or the British to provide a frigate. It must make cost comparisons. Sir Frank Cooper concluded his evidence by saying about NATO:
I can say pretty clearly by the time we come to a decision we are reasonably satisfied about the veracity of our own costs and the international ones.
The Civil Service has, at last, responded under the constraints of an international organisation. However, most domestic Departments regard with horror the very idea of comparing the costs of an operation with those of neighbouring countries with similar problems. Instead, all sorts of abstract concepts are established to try to measure cost effectiveness.
That will never be put right while the generalists, who were unfortunately described as amateurs in Fulton's language, take the attitude that management skill can be added late in life. It is insolent to suggest that six months at some management course will turn a generalist into a skilled manager. Even if we double their salaries and promise to make them dukes when they retire, we could not find people capable of being both full-scale generalists and skilled managers.
Because the order, which is already in force, offers no hope of solving the problem of turning the Civil Service into a management body under skilled control, I and my hon. Friends will vote with the Labour Party tonight.

The Minister of State, Treasury (Mr. Barney Hayhoe): I wish to respond immediately to some of the comments of the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright). Under the Conservative Government, the Civil Service is more efficient, better managed, more cost-effective and slimmer. It is the smallest Civil Service since 1967. We are on course to achieve our 1984 target for a Civil Service of 630,000, which will then be the smallest Civil Service since the war.
I welcome this short debate about the reorganisation of Government Departments. However, many of the speeches had precious little to do with the transfer functions order as such. Some of the criticism appeared to be excessively contrived, and some of the opposition was directed not at what had been done but at how, when and why it has been done.
The arguments were confused. The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) said that the whole thing was a terrible plot by the Prime Minister so that she could impose her vindictiveness on the service. The hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) said that the mandarins were, as ever, getting their way and sabotaging the Fulton proposals. The Opposition cannot have it both ways. I reject the hon. Member for Norwich, South's attacks on senior civil servants.
In my criticisms of the way that much of the debate has gone, I exempt my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor), who made a constructive speech and asked whether I could give an assurance that the undertakings given in July about the 1982 pay negotialtions, their conduct and the access to arbitration, subject to a parliamentary override, had been affected by the change. I give him the absolute assurance that the change has made no difference at all. Those undertakings still stand.
Comments were made about the Government's general attitude to the Civil Service. We had a diatribe from the right hon. Member for Swansea, West about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and I repudiate and reject his absurd allegations. His talk of spite and vindictiveness better described his remarks than the attitude of my right hon. Friend.
As I and other Ministers have often said, we are furtunate to be served so well by a Civil Service with high standards of integrity and a freedom from corruption which is much envied around the world. Civil servants are doing worthwhile jobs. They are carrying out the will of Parliament and the Government and they deserve our gratitude. It was noticeable that the only clear tribute to the Civil Service in the debate came from my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East.

Mr. Charles R. Morris: Will the Minister explain during the diatribe that he is reading out what contribution is made to the efficiency and effectiveness of the Civil Service by having two heads of the service when hitherto we had one?

Mr. Hayhoe: The right hon. Gentleman made that point a number of times. I do not believe that it is fundamental. I accept that the arrangement is unprecedented, but that does not make the system unworkable or wrong.

Mr. Morris: It is nonsense.

Mr. Hayhoe: Knowing the two individuals concerned, I am clear that they will be able to work closely together, and they will have separate responsibilities on a number of matters.

Mr. Morris: Why do we need two?

Mr. Hayhoe: The right hon. Gentleman must not get so excited. He knows better than his hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, Soul h the quality of our senior civil servants, and I am sure that the arrangement of joint heads will work out perfectly well.

Mr. Michael English: Why did the Minister say that civil servants were not corrupt when it is clear that after leaving the Civil Service some of them take jobs that were offered to them while they were in the service?

Mr. Hayhoe: I do not accept that that is an indication that the individuals concerned are corrupt. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will regret those remarks tomorrow.
The Opposition should ask themselves what would be achieved if they succeeded in annulling the order. It would not undo the hardships that they may think have been caused by the change. On the contrary, it would make matters much worse, because it would create more disruption and uncertainty for those in the Civil Service who deal with the central Departments.
We have now had two months of working under these new arrangements. I assure the House that things are settling down pretty well—very much better than many who have seen major changes in the machinery of government could have expected.
The right hon. Member for Swansea, West asked why there was no consultation with the trade unions before the announcement. He seemed to think that the Civil Service unions had an absolute right to consultation. He knows very well that machinery of government matters are traditionally regarded as being not for negotiation but for the Prime Minister's decision.
Certainly, after a general election, when Prime Ministers are constructing their Administrations, never has the question arose that they must negotiate with the Civil Service unions about how they deploy their ministerial team. Elaborate arrangements were made to ensure that the staff affected were told about the reorganisation and as much as possible about how they would be affected at the same time as the Prime Minister was making her statement. As is normal, the union leaders were given advance warning of the statement so that they could prepare themselves for the questions that they would receive from their members.
A great deal of effort has been made to ensure that the interests of the staff concerned are well looked after. They are being allowed to express preferences as to which Department they eventually wish to work in, be it the Treasury or the new Management and Personnel Office. Proper career management will make sure that individuals do not suffer.

Mr. John Garrett: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Hayhoe: I shall continue because I am trying to answer other points that have been made. The hon. Gentleman knows that time is limited, and it is only fair that I should continue.
I was asked, why have a reorganisation last November which the Prime Minister had decided against about a year

earlier? Reference was made to the report of the Sub-Committee of the Select Committee chaired by the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon). As he will know, that report said that it was a balance of argument. At the end of 1980, the arguments were finely balanced, but after about a year, seeing how things were working in practice, the Prime Minister decided, as she was fully entitled to do, that the advantages lay in uniting the manpower and expenditure aspects of resource allocation and control—giving a boost to efficiency and personnel management—by bringing the Management and Personnel Office and the Rayner unit under the same umbrella.
The hon. Member for Thornaby (Mr. Wrigglesworth) asked about hiving off the public expenditure sections of the Treasury and creating a "bureau of the budget" type solution. As he will know, because he follows these matters with care, this was referred to in paragraph 26 of the Select Committee report. The arguments there are persuasive, and although the matter was one for the Prime Minister, I believe that they were probably the determinant.
Questions have been raised about the effect of the Treasury now being more closely involved in pay issues; but the Treasury has always had an important say in Civil Service pay settlements. How could it be otherwise? There is no reason why the line should be altered in any way as a result of these changes. Major decisions on pay were never taken by CSD Ministers in isolation. Inevitably, and rightly, the Prime Minister and Chancellor, together with other Ministers, were involved. The new arrangements will not alter that in any way.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East asked about the Megaw inquiry into the future arrangements for determining Civil Service pay and whether these new changes in the central Departments would delay that work. I again give him the assurance that there should be no delay as a result. I hope that the Megaw committee, which has a formidable task before it, will be able to report at the time when the Government ask it, in the summer of this year, so that its recommendations can contribute to and perhaps be a determinant in the settlements for 1983 and onwards.
The right hon. Member for Swansea, West referred to industrial relations and the contacts between those responsible for the Civil Service in the Treasury, in the new MPO and in the trade unions. There will, of course, be close co-operation between the Treasury and the MPO on industrial relations matters, as there had previously been between the different divisions of the CSD and the Treasury.
With regard to the point made by the hon. Member for Thornaby, there is a very close liaison and a continued co-location between the MPO and the sections of the Treasury principally concerned. He asked about the way in which matters would be handled in this House. I shall be dealing with them. I sit in on important meetings in the MPO and I hope that I shall be able to demonstrate at Question Time and at other times in the House that I am very much involved and concerned with the matters for which I shall answer. It is not unusual for a Minister to answer in this House for matters which are the direct responsibility of a Minister in another place. The Law Officers have always answered in this House for matters concerning the Lord Chancellor.

Mr. Wrigglesworth: Is there a precedent for a Minister responding in this House for a Department for which he has no responsibility?

Mr. Hayhoe: I wish that the hon. Gentleman would listen. The Law Officers answer in the House for matters which are the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor.
I believe that a great deal of the criticism and of the fears and anxieties about which we have heard tonight are based on a combination of misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the motives and the details of the changes which have been made. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear in her statement of 12 November that there are advantages—they have been acknowledged by committees which have studied these matters—in brigading the control of manpower and the control of expenditure in the Treasury and in having a separate Department with distinct responsibilities for organisation, management and overall efficiency of the Civil Service, and for personnel management. It is wrong to think of the Management and Personnel Office as just the rump of the CSD now that pay and manpower matters have been transferred to the Treasury.
The MPO has clear, coherent and vitally important responsibilities which it will be able to pursue single-mindedly and with vigour. It is linked organisationally to the Cabinet Office, which helps to give a spread of vision to its aims across the whole workings of Government. The Prime Minister, as Minister for the Civil Service, continues to be responsible for the functions it discharges.
My right hon. and noble Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is in day-to-day charge. I believe that it will be seen as a Department with a lot of clout in Whitehall, and that it will be able to carry out a very important function concerning the future of the Civil Service. This organisation of the central Departments should give a more concentrated approach to control of resources at the Treasury, and a stronger and more active approach to the Management and Personnel Office to secure efficiency, and not just in terms of cutting costs.
My right hon. and noble Friend will be announcing and publishing soon an action document setting out the aims and strategies of the Department. This, I hope, will meet many of the detailed criticisms made by the hon. Member for Norwich, South. The Treasury is equally determined to use the opportunities afforded by the reorganisation to make improvements in resource management. Of course, the Treasury and the MPO must work closely together to achieve common aims, and I am happy to report that the transition has been smooth and that much credit is due to the individual civil servants who have made all this possible. No one would claim that the present arrangements are perfect, but they are working well, they will get better, and it would be wrong to slam the gears into reverse as the Opposition would have us do tonight. I hope that they will withdraw the motion. If they do not, I hope that the House will reject it.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 51, Noes 107.

Division No.42]
[11.30 pm


AYES


Alton, David
Litherland, Robert


Beith, A.J.
Lyons, Edward (Bradf'dW)


Bennett, Andrew (Sf'kp'tN)
McKay, Allen (Penistone)


Booth, Rt Hon Albert
Marshall, D (G'gowS'ton)


Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n&amp;P)
Millan, Rt Hon Bruce


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Penhaligon, David


Cowans, Harry
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Crowther, Stan
Prescott, John


Cryer, Bob
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Dalyell, Tam
Skinner, Dennis


Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)
Soley, Clive


Dixon, Donald
Spearing, Nigel


Dormand, Jack
Strang, Gavin


Eastham, Ken
Wainwright, R.(ColneV)


Garrett, John (NorwichS)
Welsh, Michael


Hardy, Peter
White, Frank R.


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Whitlock, William


Haynes, Frank
Williams, Rt Hon A. (S'sea W)


HomeRobertson, John
Winnick, David


Hooley, Frank
Woolmer, Kenneth


Howells, Geraint
Wright, Sheila


Hoyle, Douglas



Johnson, James (Hull West)
Tellers for the Ayes:


Lamond, James
Mr. George Morton and


Leighton, Ronald
Mr. James Tinn.


Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)



NOES


Alexander, Richard
Knight, MrsJill


Aspinwall, Jack
Lang, Ian


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Lee, John


Berry, Hon Anthony
Lester, Jim (Beeston)


Bevan, David Gilroy
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Loveridge, John


Bottomley, Peter (W'wich W)
McCrindle, Robert


Bright, Graham
MacGregor, John


Brinton, Tim
MacKay, John (Argyll)


Brotherton, Michael
Major, John


Brown, Michael (Brigg&amp;Sc'n)
Marlow, Antony


Bruce-Gardyne, John
Mather, Carol


Budgen, Nick
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Carlisle, John (LutonWest)
Mayhew, Patrick


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Chapman, Sydney
Miller, Hal (B'grove)


Clark, Hon A (Plym'th, S'n)
Mills, lain (Meriden)


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Moate, Roger


Cockeram, Eric
Murphy, Christopher


Cope, John
Myles, David


Cranborne, Viscount
Neale, Gerrard


Dorrell, Stephen
Needham, Richard


Dover, Denshore
Newton, Tony


du Cann, Rt Hon Edward
Onslow, Cranley


Faith, MrsSheila
Osborn, John


Fenner, Mrs Peggy
Page, Richard (SW Herts)


Fletcher, A. (Ed'nb'gh N)
Parris, Matthew


Fookes, Miss Janet
Pawsey, James


Forman, Nigel
Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Proctor, K. Harvey


Goodhew, Sir Victor
Raison, Timothy


Goodlad, Alastair
Renton, Tim


Griffiths, Peter Portsm'thN)
Rhodes James, Robert


Gummer, John Selwyn
Ridley, Hon Nicholas


Hawkins, Paul
Roberts, M. (Cardiff NW)


Hawksley, Warren
Rossi, Hugh


Hayhoe, Barney
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Heddle, John
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Holland, Philip (Carlton)
Sims, Roger


Howell, Rt Hon D.(G'ldf'd)
Skeet, T. H. H.


Jopling, Rt Hon Michael
Speed, Keith


Kershaw, Sir Anthony
Speller, Tony




Sproat, lain
Waddington, David


Stanbrook, lvor
Waller, Gary


Stevens, Martin
Ward, John


Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)
Watson, John


Stradling Thomas, J.
Wells, Bowen


Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)
Wickenden, Keith


Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman
Wolfson, Mark


Thomas, Rt Hon Peter



Thompson, Donald
Tellers for the Noes:


Thorne, Neil (llfordSouth)
Mr. Peter Brooke and


Thornton, Malcolm
Mr. David Hunt.


Viggers, Peter

Question accordingly negatived.

Motorways (Sevenoaks and Swanley)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Jopling.]

Mr. Mark Wolfson: I am grateful for this opportunity of debating the subject of motorways in the Sevenoaks and Swanley area. I am aware that there is presently a High Court case on the matter, which requires that I be a little circumspect in the subjects that I cover under this general heading. I want to deal with five points. Two are specific and parochial to my constituency, and three have a wider relevance than to simply the Sevenoaks area.
I want, first, to talk about the M25 Sevenoaks Swanley link of the London orbital motorway. I have always supported the proposal for the completion of the motorway by that link, and I continue to do so, because I am not convinced that there is any alternative if we are to achieve a real improvement in the quality of life in the villages of Otford and Eynsford which are on the A225, currently carrying a considerable amount of heavy traffic.
The obvious disadvantages of taking the M25 through an area of outstanding natural beauty are outweighed by the valuable contribution that it will make to the quality of life in those two villages. For the greatest good for the greatest number, that link should be completed. There is a difficulty in this country in that we are perhaps too often concerned with maintaining the countryside. It is important that we should be concerned, but we are perhaps over-concerned about that compared with our appalling lack of concern for the quality of life in towns and villages. It is often forgotten that changed farming use can have, certainly visually, almost as dramatic an effect on the countyside as the advent of a motorway, without any of the corresponding environmental benefits.
The cost of continual delay in the completion of the motorway is great. The M25 around London is about 10 years behind its original schedule. On the most optimistic view, it is unlikely that the road will be completed before the end of the decade, although it was originally hoped to complete it by now. Only an uncomplimentary comparison can be drawn between our progress and that of the French on their Paris peripherique, which was built about 20 years ago, and on the additional orbital roads built since then. I support the Secretary of State's continuing moves to achieve the link.
I turn to the proposed slip roads from the M26 at Otford and the alternative to them. It is very helpful that my hon. and learned Friend should have a particularly clear and intimate knowledge of the area. As he knows, there is an alternative to the link roads at Otford, which could be incorporated in an existing interchange at Chevening. There is continuing concern among several of my constituents about the present proposals. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend understands that opposition to the proposals for slip roads at Otford comes mainly, not surprisingly, from the residents of Otford.
In correspondence, meetings and discussions with me, the residents have made it clear that their concern is deep and continuing and they have put their views to the Secretary of State. I share much of their concern. In developing our motorway system and the intersections


between motorways and other major roads, it is vital to take a long-term view of a road system adequate for the year 2,000 and of a possible Channel tunnel.
My constituency is in a part of Kent that faces extreme and never-ending traffic pressure. It is vital to keep heavy through traffic on the motorway and major roads. Surely, interchanges should be made directly between major roads so that there is no risk of drawing traffic on to comparatively minor roads. The proposals for the slip roads at Otford will encourage traffic to come off the major roads onto minor roads. Entries into and exits from motorways generate traffic. In this case, they would also generate pressure to give up green-belt land for industrial and, probably, warehouse development.
In support of that contention, I shall refer to an article in the Financial Times, which clearly brought out the likely effect of the M25 in raising land values on territory adjacent to it. I accept that point. There must be continuing industrial and commercial development if future jobs in Britain are to be secured. However, in producing a road network, we must all be aware of what will flow from that. In the long-term view, it is important to keep heavy traffic on the motorways and major roads.
Local opinion manifested by the county and district planning authorities has so far supported the view of having slip-roads at Otford. However, in the light of a considerable number of my constituents' views, I must ask the Minister to hold a public inquiry into the proposal, which would also give an opportunity for the further consideration of my suggested alternative.
I appreciate that the alternative of an interchange as part of the existing interchange at Chevening would be more costly, but, taking a long-term view, such costs could be justified. By an innovative approach to ways of achieving the interchange, it might not need to be as expensive as originally thought. It is a matter of strategic importance, not only to Sevenoaks but also to the wider areas of West Kent, East Surrey and the outer suburbs of South East London.
My three remaining points have a relevance wider than Sevenoaks. First, I shall put to the Minister the importance of achieving more effective traffic management schemes. An example of that is where the M20 and M26 signposting has discouraged traffic from using the A225 and encouraged through traffic to use the existing motorways. That is only a signposted system and is not mandatory. However, evidence shows that, to an extent, traffic has been prepared to follow that signposted route.
I have experienced great difficulty in getting the local authority and the police to produce mandatory traffic management schemes which would keep heavy lorries off roads which are not built for them and, particularly, out of Sevenoaks High Street where there are now alternative routes. My support for the proposal to increase lorry weights is dependent on my being assured by the Secretary of State that there is scope for the Government to bring in much firmer measures to achieve mandatory traffic management schemes which could take care of the problem. There are examples in my constituency where that would achieve a major benefit.
Great progress has been made in recent years on the landscaping of motorways but noise from them is still an appalling environmental pollutant. I wish to know what research and effective action is being taken in that field.

In my constituency, I am aware of a silent valley now filled with endless noise. It is not a hum but a persistent roar. I understand that tyres rather than engines cause a geat deal of the noise. What action can be taken and what action is being taken to deal with these problems nationally as well as locally?
Finally, I direct attention to the possibly unnecessary use of land in the take-up of land for the development of motorways. I make a comparison with Canada, a country where we would all accept that land is at less of a premium than it is in Britain. Yet from my own knowledge I know that intersections of motorways in Canada have a much smaller land take due to much tighter curves being used which require slower speeds from motorists. Are slower speeds to negotiate tighter turns wrong? What criteria are used in the construction of motorways in Britain and why have we taken the view that less sharp curves allowing greater speeds are necessarily the right approach? I use the example of the existing Chevening interchange, which appears to be very wasteful in the use of land.

The Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) has had a number of conversations with me, both formally and informally, about the roads in his constituency and he has discovered that I have the good fortune of knowing quite well some of the more attractive parts of his constituency. My wife's family come from Sidcup and, as a result, I know Sevenoaks quite well, including the area to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention.
Recently my brother-in-law took our respective families on a picnic outing near Polhill. When we had all settled down as two families to enjoy a picnic in a pleasant valley near Polhill, he told me that we were picknicking on the site of the proposed Swanley-Sevenoaks road with which he knew that I was concerned and which the Government are proposing to build. He brought me face to face with the dilemmas that confront the area. We are proposing to build a road that will have substantial environmental advantages, especially for the villages in the Darent valley but which will be built through an area of outstanding natural beauty.
As my hon. Friend said, the proposed road is part of the Government's scheme to build the M25 motorway as an orbital road around London. That is the Government's highest priority in the trunk road programme because of the great benefits that we see accruing to the economy and the environment. We are making good progress with the construction of the M25. The entire section from the A1 to the Dartford tunnel is now complete or under construction. When finished, the orbital route will, in effect, provide a giant bypass for the capital and will take a great deal of heavy traffic out of many communities on the fringe of London. It will speed up journeys for heavy traffic between industrial centres from Tilbury and the south coast ports and thereby give a boost to the revival of our industrial economy.
In the Government's opinion, the Swanley-Sevenoaks section is a vital link in the M25 orbital route. It represents good value for the taxpayers' money. I know that there is strong opposition to it and that that is largely inspired by the attractive nature of the countryside through which it has to run.
There are those who suggest that as an alternative it would be satisfactory to leave traffic to find its way between Swanley and Sevenoaks taking the more round-about route via the M20 and the M26. We have considered that suggestion with care, but we cannot accept it. Some traffic—largely the traffic that did not know the area—would use the route but at considerable extra cost in terms of time spent and the running expenses of vehicles. Most of those who knew the area would try to avoid the roundabout route, and a great deal of traffic would continue to cut through on the unsuitable though much more direct connecting roads, such as the A225, which go up the middle of the Darent Valley and run through the attractive villages of Eynsford, Shoreham and Otford.
Those who are against the Swanley-Sevenoaks road are worried about the possible consequences to the environment. I concede, as my hon. Friend did, that it is difficult to fit a motorway into an area of such outstanding beauty, but I believe that the plans we put forward succeed in keeping the damage to that part of the Darent Valley to the acceptable minimum. The Darent Valley is affected, but as the inspector wrote in his report of the 1978 inquiry:
Because the preferred route runs along the Western fringe of the Darent Valley, the impact on the valley is less than at first appears, and the impact on Polhill can be exaggerated.
Ministers taking decisions took those environmental problems very seriously and took a great deal of time over the landscaping that could be done to absorb the road into the top of the hill alongside the valley. I assure my hon. Friend and his constituents that everything possible will be done to lessen the damage by landscaping and planting, and concealing the road and its traffic as far as possible from the centre of the Darent Valley.
However, in the end we have been driven, as the inspector was driven, to the same conclusion as my hon. Friend, who I am sure is voicing the opinion of the majority of his constituents, that the unfortunate effects on part of the Darent Valley are outweighed by the considerable environmental benefits that the new motorway will bring to nearby communities including the town of Sevenoaks. The existing roads in the area such as the A225, A224 and the A227 will be relieved of much heavy traffic. Places such as Otford, Eynsford and Shoreham will become much pleasanter places to live in with less danger of accidents, less dirt, vibration and noise. About 1,300 properties fronting the existing roads will benefit from a significant reduction in noise once the heavy traffic can be taken on to the new road.
Therefore, we decided that there was a strong case for the new motorway. That case has been tested over a long process. In the mid-1970s there was a public consultation exercise, which showed overwhelming support by the public who responded for the route that we are still pursuing. There was a lengthy public inquiry from September 1978 to February 1979, conducted by a distinguished independent inspector, Sir George Dobry, who recommended that we should make the line orders for the road, having been satisfied on the evidence that he heard and exhaustively analysed in his report.
The Secretary of State accepted that report and made the necessary orders in January 1981. The objectors have challenged the basis on which the orders were made. There has recently been a High Court hearing into that challenge, which was heard only on Thursday and Friday last week.

Judgment has now been reserved. I expect that judgment will be delivered in the near future, which will enable us to know whether we can proceed.
Given that we have been driven by the evidence to believe that the road is to the public benefit, we hope for a successful outcome of the current High Court proceedings. If the outcome is successful, we shall press ahead to deal with the compulsory purchase order, which was published just before Christmas. That will almost certainly require a further inquiry into the objections that I am sure we will receive. We shall organise that further inquiry as soon as we reasonably can.
If funds are made available—as I am sure they will be, as the Government have no intention of diverting funds from the M25—and if we make reasonable progress in the statutory procedures, we hope that construction of the link can begin early in 1983. I hope that the construction will be completed and the road opened by late 1985.
Given that we have just had a High Court hearing and are awaiting judgment, I cannot go further on the merits of the case. I can only reassure my hon. Friend and his constituents that the difficult and sensitive road has been considered with considerable care by Ministers over a long public process. We have been driven to the same conclusion as him, that the public advantage lies heavily in the construction of the route. We shall await whether the courts uphold us and confirm that we have given all the rights that we should to those who challenge that view.
My hon. Friend went on to the separate question of the proposed slip roads that we are now intending to build on the existing M26 at Otford. That again is an announcement that we made last year. I appreciate the fact that it has aroused controversy. I listened with considerable interest to my hon. Friend expounding at greater length the views that I know he holds that it may be an unwise decision. He shares his constituents' concern that it might be wiser to put the slip road at Chevening.
That is not a new feature of the road proposals for the area. It has a long history. It has been considered over some years. The decision not to put the slip roads at Chevening goes back to a public inquiry which was held in 1976, after which the then Secretaries of State decided that the high cost of the additional connections at Chevening were not justified by the low levels of traffic expected. If I may update the figures, to put in the alternative links at Chevening would cost about £5 million, whereas the proposals at Otford would cost about £1 million. It is five times as expensive to go to Chevening.
After the 1976 decision taken by our predecessors, a joint study was set up, conducted by the Department of Transport, Kent county council and Sevenoaks district council, to examine the case for additional connections at Chevening or at various alternative locations. As a result of the study, and with the agreement of the two local authorities, as well as the Government, it was concluded that there were greater benefits from putting in the links at Otford.
I have followed the concern that the announcement has aroused in the locality. It particularly concerns me when it is expressed by people who live in the villages along the A225, whom we are particularly trying to benefit by constructing the Swanley-Sevenoaks road. Again, the announcement and the publication of the draft orders only happened after careful consideration of the issues.
The aim of the new slip roads is to provide better access to traffic intending to go east from the northern side of


Sevenoaks and the industrial estates in particular. We believe that that traffic will be particularly served by the proposed links. We do not believe that the links will attract additional traffic of significance on to the A225 north of the link road. The bulk of the traffic coming from the north comes from areas such as Bromley and Orpington. Once we have built the Swanley-Sevenoaks links and the associated Badger's Mount link, they of course will provide the best routes on to the M26 from the urban areas.
The purpose of the links is to provide, with reasonable value for the taxpayer's money and with reasonable benefits to the environment, good connecting links to the M26 for the traffic, particularly from northern Sevenoaks and the industrial estates. That is the basis on which we put forward the proposals.
However, objections are coming in to the published orders. It is obvious that we have aroused a considerable division of opinion in the area. My hon. Friend supports his constituents in expressing concern and also asks for a public inquiry into the objections. I am happy to confirm that, assuming that the present level of objections, or anything like it, is maintained by the local residents, there will of course have to be a public inquiry under an independent inspector, at which all the issues can be fully debated. No final decision will be taken on the links until the public inquiry has been held, the inspector's report received and the Secretaries of State have had an opportunity to consider the whole matter in the light of the evidence and advice that they will get from the inspector.
Thirdly, my hon. Friend asked for more effective traffic management measures to be taken in his area and for the Government to do more to enable his county council and the police to initiate traffic management measures. It is

one of the main purposes of the Government's trunk road proposals that, when we build the modern purpose-built motorways for the heavy industrial traffic that an industrial country like this requires, it will make it easier for county councils to make orders to take the lorry traffic off the old, unsuitable rural roads which were never designed for it and where the heavy lorry is a menace going through villages and shopping centres.
Already local authorities have considerable power under the Dykes Act—a Private Member's Bill, sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) back, I believe, in 1973—to designate certain areas as banned to lorries above a given weight. There have also been proposals in the recent Armitage report for the wider use of lorry routes and the creation of lorry action areas. As I say, the county councils already have adequate legal powers, but it is the intention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport and myself to issue fresh advice to local authorities to assist them to make more use of the powers that they have to designate lorry routes and to begin the process of consultation required to establish lorry action areas.
I hope that we can adduce useful advice to enable my hon. Friend and his constituents to put propositions in their locality to divert lorries away from unsuitable roads and to make it easier for the Kent county council, which is the highway authority and which must make decisions on local matters of routing, and so on, to make the best effective use of its powers.

We—

The question having been proposed after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at ten minutes past Twelve o'clock.